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4dl0o9 | if coca-cola's recipe is a trade secret, what would happen if someone reverse-engineered it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dl0o9/eli5_if_cocacolas_recipe_is_a_trade_secret_what/ | {
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"Probably not much. There are other colas that are similar and many that are probably better. Coke is marketing giant. An exact copy isn't going to have Coke's brand recognition. ",
"Exactly what happened when someone did - nothing.\n\nCoca-Cola is not about the flavor. It would not be difficult to replicate Coca-Cola - although one known ingredient, the coca leaf extract, flavors from the plant that cocaine comes from, isn't available to anyone else because of drug laws. Coca-Cola is about the brand. A cola that tastes exactly like Coke couldn't compete with the Coke brand.",
"Fun fact: the only two persons that know the recipe never travel together. In that way, if for example a plane crashes, their is still somebody left who knows the recipe. "
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1pqwhq | why don't some people react to pepper spray? | When I was in the military and we were doing riot control training we got hit directly in the face with OC spray and it hurt like hell, but rarely, like less than one in a hundred were people who it didn't affect at all. What was different about them that made them immune to the pepper spray? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pqwhq/why_dont_some_people_react_to_pepper_spray/ | {
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"They have special eyes.",
"There are people who are simply immune to it. I don't really want to find out if I'm one of them, although the idea does seem interesting.",
"Two possibilities\n\n1-genetics. In the same way people can eat spicy food better than others, some people just don't react to pepper spray like others\n\n2-idiocy. I myself fall into this category. Though I still react, the number of times I've rubbed my eyes while eating something incredibly spicy is way too high. If I kept doing it, eventually my tolerance would go up and I'd not feel it as much."
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5mpbn0 | draining the swamp | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mpbn0/eli5_draining_the_swamp/ | {
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"Basically weeding out the corrupt ones. When you drain a swamp, all that's left is the trash. Then you get rid of the trash. ",
"a term used by Donald Trump during his campaign (not sure if he actually started it or his supporters did) as a catchphrase for his statement that he would get the big business influence out of washington.\n\nOn that note, he's not wrong, there **are** a lot of people in the government who either are from or have ties to large corporations, banks etc, creating concerns about conflict of interest and that they're likely tipping the scales in their own company's favor.\n\nHowever, he's come under fire recently for cabinet choice his critics say also have big business ties. To my memory he included Exxon Mobil's CEO as one of those picks, which critics have been all over. "
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33viyr | why are movies still released in theaters? | I was thinking with the The interview released by Sony over youtube and other streaming sites why do companies still sell movies in theaters? it seems cheaper to just digitally release the movies directly on the internet. $5.00 per watch on the internet sounds fair
The only problem I cant think o would be people watching movies together, but I know a lot of people who dont go to movie theaters.
the whole concept seems outdated to me | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33viyr/eli5why_are_movies_still_released_in_theaters/ | {
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"Because going to the theater is an experience. You go with a group of people, you are watching a screen much larger than you could ever own with a sound system far superior to what you could ever own. Yes you can watch the movie online in your home, or buy it on Blueray or via your cable but you cannot replicate the movie theater experience unless you are wealthy enough to build your own theater. ",
"Showing a movie in theaters is very profitable for the producers, as theaters pay a large portion (85% IIRC) of their ticket sales to the movie's producer, and it costs the producer nothing to show it in theaters first, and then release it later.",
"Because no one has the big screens or the high quality audio system at home. Only theatres have that.\n\nAlso, by only putting a movie in theatres for the first few months, people will have no choice but to pay for tickets to go see it. A lot more profit for the studio this way.",
"For the spectacle. Seeing the T-Rex in Jurassic Park or the train crash in The Fugitive wouldn't have nearly had the same effect on me as a kid if I had seen it on YouTube."
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327j37 | where does energy 'go' when it is used by a living thing? | Energy is like matter right? It can't be destroyed or created. Just captured and used. If that's the case, when I eat food and then run, what's actually happening chemically with respect to the loss of that energy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/327j37/eli5_where_does_energy_go_when_it_is_used_by_a/ | {
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"When you eat, you absorb the carbs, proteins etc. When you run, these are broken down in order to give you energy to run. That energy was spent in moving your body from one place to another - it gets transformed into kinetic energy and potential energy and also produces body heat. In a nutshell as you have learnt energy cannot be created or destroyed. IT just transforms from one form to another.",
"If you run, chemical energy stored in your body is converted in to moment and heat. (And really the movement is also eventually converted in to heat.) Which is why you get hot and sweat when you run."
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1zm8za | the byzantine generals problem. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zm8za/eli5_the_byzantine_generals_problem/ | {
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"The Byzantine Generals Problem is a model for communication. It uses some number of players (\"Generals\") who have to come to a consensus. However, they are limited in how they are allowed to communicate--they have to send messages by courier, but the couriers may get captured (i.e. they never deliver their message). Also, couriers take a certain amount of time to deliver their message.\n\nThus, the challenge is: what messages do the generals send in order to coordinate an attack? They must all know the time of the attack and they must all be certain that the other generals also know the time of the attack, and that the other generals know that they know that the other generals know the time of the attack, and so on. Various versions of the problem have different numbers of generals (anywhere from two to thousands or more) and different requirements of how many generals must be certain of an attack time (typically all of them, but sometimes this requirement is relaxed). Some versions of the problem also introduce generals who intentionally send out incorrect information.\n\nThe most obvious solutions turn out to be not so good. Let's assume two generals and they must both agree. One general could send a courier saying \"we attack at dawn,\" but maybe that courier gets lost, so he requests the other general send back another courier as an acknowledgement. However, *that* courier could get lost, meaning that the second general has received the message to attack at dawn while the first general doesn't know whether or not the message was received. The first general doesn't know whether to attack or not, so this solution is no good. The first general could, instead, send 1000 couriers at once and request 1000 acknowledgements back, but that only changes the odds--he can never be 100% certain that they don't all get lost (and even if they don't get lost the second general doesn't know that without a second round of confirmations, this time going from General 1 to General 2).\n\nIn many forms the Byzantine Generals Problem is proven to be unsolvable--there is no finite set of messages that gives 100% assurance that everyone knows when to attack. There are solutions to various other versions of the problem, though. "
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3c42fn | what happens to the proceeds of crime? | Say its drug money what happens to it ? After its been taken as evidence, and the case has gone through the courts what actually happens to all the money from crime? Does it go to the state or given to charity ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c42fn/eli5_what_happens_to_the_proceeds_of_crime/ | {
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"The police get to keep it. It's called \"civil asset forfeiture\", and it gets rolled into the police budget. It's been a big sticking point lately because it has been used to seize money that almost certainly was not acquired or intended to be used illegally. ",
"To follow up on /u/HannasAnarion's answer, if physical assets are taken (not cash), they are either used by the agency seizing them (like police agencies using high end cars) or they're auctioned off, with the agency keeping the proceeds."
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5nz7p5 | how is that alcohol is not good for flesh wounds? | So my cousin in new years eve had just taken out her wisdom teeth and one week later went to the dentist to remove the sutures. The doctor said she better skip drinking because it could aggravate the alveolus situation. That left me thinking... isn't alcohol good for disinfecting the tissue and maybe cauterize wounds in general? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nz7p5/eli5_how_is_that_alcohol_is_not_good_for_flesh/ | {
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"First, alcohol is a blood thinner and can lead to excessive bleeding from wounds. \nSecond, it is a disinfectant but it's rarely ever drank by itself and the sugars feed bacteria that can get into the open wound. It also works by drying out bacteria and your cells essentially killing them making wound repair with long term exposure harder. "
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5j87eu | if all 7.4 billion humans were to drop dead right now, how many fossilized skeletons would we leave in 65 million years, and what evidence of our civilization would there be? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5j87eu/eli5_if_all_74_billion_humans_were_to_drop_dead/ | {
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"I can't answer the first part, but there are a few Shows you can watch they did this topic. \n\n[Aftermath: Population Zero](_URL_1_) was on the National Geographic channel. They did an overall View of the planet.\nTheir final statement:\n\n > (25,000 years A.H)\nEarth enters a new Ice Age, and glaciers expand south covering most of the Northern Hemisphere. The last traces of New York City are completely erased. Most species however adapt and thrive; sea lions, ducks, fish, wolves, horses, cattle, elephants all adapt alongside many other species. However, evidence left by Moon exploration missions and certain plastic items will survive intact for not only thousands, but millions of years after mankind has vanished. They will be the last legacy of the human race.\n\n[Life After People](_URL_0_) was on the Discovery channel.\n\nThis series broke it down a little: Structures, Chemicals, Roads...etc. The first episode did talk about the bodies and what happens to them. Its been a while since I've watched it, but I might have some more information.",
"I don't know the answer, but I will say that body's will only survive in dry or frozen places. I forget where I read this, but there's a huge difference in what archeological evidence we have from places like Egypt vs places like Guatemala",
"Why? What are you planning?",
"There would be plenty of signs of our civilization. Brick and wood cities can be analyzed 3000 years later. In another 3000, our paper writing would probably be dust. Our electronics unreadable. But inscription and engraving? That will stay. So the ceramic plate with a prayer on it at your grandma's house? Someone might be able to reconstruct it.\n\nThey'd look at our cities and see a lack of bullets in most of the walls, implying we didn't die due to war. But plague or moved away.\n\nDirt would collect and settle, and stuff would catch fire. They'll be able to tell the fire happened after.\n\nC14 dating would give an approximate time period that things died. Our nuclear reactors/bombs would end up throwing the count off though, comparing stuff from now to a hundred years ago.\n\nGo farther out in time? Writings no longer legible unless preserved in a bog. Some skeleton would survive. We can find Dino eggs and bugs and feathers, a human should be able to survive better. And there are 7 billion of us in the same strata. Some future Schliemann will hit the jackpot and screw everything up.\n\nOur biggest structures would survive in fragmented form. Dunno if their use would be apparent or not. It'd be up to the structure. \n\nAnd the elephant foot at each reactor would be obvious. As would the waste spoil at each enrichment facility. They'll find uranium where the isotope percentages are off. It's how we found the natural nuclear reactor in Okla. ( I think)"
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21y0kg | how are engineers able to build subway tunnels under already built infrastructure? | It amazes me when I'm in the subway in big cities how these tunnels have been dug beneath skyscapers? How do the builders do it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21y0kg/eli5how_are_engineers_able_to_build_subway/ | {
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"Using this big worm drill. _URL_0_",
"There are multiple ways that they can do it. Here in Boston where I live they finished the [Big Dig](_URL_1_) a few years ago. Over the course of roughly ten years they consolidated all the utilities through a corridor of the city and then sank an entire elevated highway underground. It had to go above and below various obstacles like a subway tunnel, a waterway, and Boston Harbor itself.\n\nThe main corridor of the sunken highway, I-93, was built in multiple sections. In parts of it they simply closed down the ground-level street for a few months, dug a 100 foot deep pit, built the tunnel, then filled the hole back in. \n\nIn another part where they had to dig directly under the existing elevated highway they first sunk steel girders 100 feet down to the bedrock, filled the area around them with concrete, then supported the existing highway on top of that while digging out the dirt and building the tunnel underneath.\n\nAt one spot they had to build the tunnel underneath an existing subway station that was itself underneath a very busy surface road in the middle of downtown Boston. To do this they first dug two vertical shafts to below the level of the subway station. They then dug horizontal tunnels underneath the station, supporting them with concrete. From those tunnels they dug hundreds of tiny shafts and filled them up with concrete. Eventually they formed it all into a complete set of concrete walls that formed the new tunnel. If you scroll close to [the bottom of this page](_URL_2_) you can see a series of graphics that show how it was done.\n\nAnother section of tunnel had to be built under multiple train tracks just outside one of Boston's main train stations where thousands of commuters pass every day. The soil under the train tracks was pretty soft so they had to figure out a way of building this tunnel without making the tracks sink into a sinkhole or anything like that. What they did in this case was to sink hundreds of pipes into the ground and then injected freezing water into them in order to freeze the ground solid. They then dug a pit on one side of the tracks and built an entire tunnel section there. They then used giant hydraulic jacks to pull the tunnel section underneath the tracks as they slowly dug out the frozen dirt underneath them. [Here's a page](_URL_0_) that describes that process.\n\nAlthough not used in Boston, another typical way of building tunnels is by using a tunnel boring machine (TBM). A TBM is basically a crawling machine that can dig out dirt or rock in front of it and then immediately seal the circular hole it creates with reinforced concrete. ",
"Very, very carefully. They'd normally avoid it, and subway tunnels go under roads: but if they dig deep enough to avoid weakening the foundations of a building, it can be done, assuming the local geology will allow. Sometimes buildings may be built with the expectation that a subway tunnel will be built under it in the near future, and the foundations designed accordingly.\n\nIt doesn't always go well, though. In 2009, construction of a subway line near the Historcal Archive of the City of Cologne, Germany, caused the ancient building and two other buildings to collapse, mercifully causing only two deaths. However, 90% of the archive, including documents going back to the year 922, was buried. About 85% of them have been recovered, but some of them badly damaged. A new building is due for completion in 2017, but restoring the documents is likely to take another 30 years.\n\nThe tunnel wasn't even under the building, but next to it, and being built using the traditional \"cut and cover\" method. But water seeped out of the tunnel and into the buildings' foundations; workers were able to raise the alarm in time, hence the very few casualties, but only just.",
"Because we're bosses, that's why.\n\nActually it's hours and hours of trial an error and looking at existing plans for the already in place infrastructure 1000's of times making sure you don't miss anything. \n\nSource: Structural Engineer. \n\nEdit: Also, and I can't state this enough, an immense amount of communication between different types of (usually) specialized Civil Engineers. Civil Engineering is broad (Usually broken up into Structural, Geotechnical, Transportation/Roadway and Environmental as the basic broad sub-categories) and it takes several specialized Civil Engineers working together to get things like this done. ",
"With London if I remember correctly there hadn't been good documentation of buildings to account for depth of all that the tube would pass under. Some lines like the Piccadilly line and Northern line are incredible deep to account for this. Others building surveryors were called in to assess already built buildings to judge whether they could withstand a tube line being built and at what depth.",
"It's not always foolproof. In chicago, old mail delivery tunnels were breached when bridge pilings went thru them. Flooded the basement of every building downtown. \n\n_URL_0_"
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1yi8b6 | why are graves 6ft deep? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yi8b6/why_are_graves_6ft_deep/ | {
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"That was found to be the depth necessary to prevent animals from picking up the scent and digging for food."
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3sse4h | why do cops put white towels on the shoulders of saved victims in crimes scenes on the movies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sse4h/eli5_why_do_cops_put_white_towels_on_the/ | {
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"I don't know about white towels, but ambulances have foil heat blankets that are used to treat hypothermia and are also used for shock. One of the symptoms of shock is cold, clammy skin, so presumably these blankets, which can trap body heat, help with that."
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3jrwr5 | how do big development teams such as bethesda work on huge games like elder scrolls and fallout for multiple years without a single leak from within the huge dev team? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jrwr5/eli5_how_do_big_development_teams_such_as/ | {
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"The threat of being sued into oblivion (no pun intended) for violating a non disclosure agreement, losing your job, and being known as untrustworthy in the industry is enough for most people. Game development is often pretty compartmentalized so it wouldn't be too hard to track down people behind the leaks since only certain groups would have access to different sets of information. ",
"Confidentiality agreements. Anyone who leaks would get sued up the butt for a lot of money. "
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72jgfy | has all the nuclear radiation emitted since 1945 affected human genetics at all? | I've heard opposing things about nuclear radiation and genetic effects. On one hand, a study found that there was no increase in genetic disorders among the descendants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, but on the other hand it's well established that some plants and animals mutated after the Chernobyl disaster. I've also heard that the Chernobyl disaster slightly altered the sex ratio in affected areas towards male births.
Are human gonads too well-protected for the chromosomes in our gametes to be altered by nuclear radiation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72jgfy/eli5_has_all_the_nuclear_radiation_emitted_since/ | {
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"Not a geneticist, but consider that we're exposed to radiation constantly from a variety of sources and that all of your genetic ancestors were since the beginning of life on this planet. It's possible that the effects would be limited in those who survived because we're pretty used to low grade radiation. Just speculation.",
"We're exposed to far more natural radiation than to radiation from nuclear weapons, at least on average. The reason is that there are radioactive substances in the ground, and that there is radiation coming from space.\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is a useful infrographic that shows pretty well how much radiation we receive from what sources. You can see there that the radiation received even by inhabitants of Fukushima is far lower than what the average person receives on a yearly basis from natural sources (Bottom left of the green box).",
"A large group of people in Brazil, over 1K people, which were directly and indirectly affected by a nuclear leak that occurred in 1987 (including the offspring) is being monitored over the years for genetic anomalies that might be related to the exposure. So far, nothing has conclusively been found."
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1o2owt | how do you "create" internet? | Was looking at a graph that showed how much 500 mb of internet costed around the world. This made me really think about how internet and bandwidth work and I can't really put my finger on my question but how do you create this bandwidth or internet that goes out from the provider to the customer? Is it just something imaginary or is it actually something that one day can seize to exist? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1o2owt/eli5_how_do_you_create_internet/ | {
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"Well, you seem to be talking about two different components of \"internet.\"\n\nThe actual content you access is nothing more than data on a computer somewhere. Let's say I create a text file on my computer and call it \"Information.txt.\" Then, you use some software on your computer to access that information, maybe by typing \"non_troppos_computer/information.txt\" into some strange web browser that would accept that kind of input. Using the internet is almost exactly the same, except instead of a text file, it's every type of file you could imagine.\n\nThough, you also seem to be referencing bandwidth, and how bandwidth is created. The answer is as simple as it seems; all of the data that goes from \"the internet\" to your computer travels through a series of cables. As a simplified example, data might go from its computer of origin, through a Cat5 cable, through a router, through a modem, through a fiber optics line that runs down the street, into your modem, into your router, into a Cat5 cable, into your computer. In the real world, though, data travels thousands and thousands of miles, so instead of a simple fiber optic line running down the block, you have an absurdly complicated network of fiber optic lines, sometimes running through data centers (maybe a facility owned by your ISP) which then route data to your computer. ISPs upgrade their bandwidth (how much internet they can send you at a time) by upgrading their cables and hardware to materials that are better at carrying electrical signals.\n\nSo to explain this figure that you saw that gave examples of how much 500mb of data costed around the world, it was probably estimating the cost of the infrastructure it would take to carry 500mb of data to a single user. Here in America, we have a relatively stable data infrastructure in place that carries high speed internet to a huge majority of the country. On the other end of the spectrum, though, you'd have a hermit in a shack in Zimbabwe on top of a mountain; piping 500mb of data to him, where there is no infrastructure in place, would obviously be a lot more expensive.",
"Hi there\n\nThe internet may be a scary place, but it rather simple.\n\nIt is like your tin can telephone, you have two machines (the tin cans) and something to send the message on (the string). When you get on the internet, it is like taking a string and tying it to the existing string. \n\nBandwidth is how fast your talking goes across the string. This is the real speed you get when it transfers. If you just yelled to your friend, the sound would get there faster than in the string, but the string can take the sound farther. \n\nnow imagine your whole school, with each student with a tin can and strings tied to other strings. What the teachers can do is take large number of the tin cans away, or cut the stings so you can't communicate. Some kids would hide there tin cans and still be able to talk, but the will be smaller and more localized than before. \n\nI hope this helps\n\nedit:grammer"
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duoxen | why do sone christians consider any kind of electronic implant the "mark of the beast" and what exactly is the mark of beast from a literal standpoint? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/duoxen/eli5_why_do_sone_christians_consider_any_kind_of/ | {
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"I think that the question:\n\n* What exactly is \"xxx\" in a prophecy, from a literal stand point\n\nis the wrong question.\n\nThe nature of prophecy is non-literal. It is like reading an IKEA manual and looking for prophetic symbolism."
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x86wt | aleph numbers....whaaat? | I started looking on Wikipedia about "Kenan and Kel"...ended up on these bad guys. Anyone interested in dull-ifying this down for me?
EDIT: _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/x86wt/aleph_numberswhaaat/ | {
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"In short, there are different values of infinity, and some are larger than others. Very crazy, but there it is.\n\nHere are examples of infinities: (A) the number of whole numbers, (B), the number of even whole numbers, (C) the number of fractions, and (D) the number of all possible numbers (including numbers like sqrt(2), which cannot be written as a fraction)\n\nAs it turns out, A, B, and C are all equal and are one kind of infinity. D, however, is a larger infinity.\n\nMathematicians determine this by trying to come up with what's called a bijection between two sets. That means every element in one set can be mapped to exactly one other element in the other set. Think of it like translating temperatures from celsius to fahrenheit - every celsius temperature has exactly one equivalent fahrenheit temperature.\n\nAs an example, consider set (A), all the whole numbers, and set (B), all the even numbers. You can pretty easily form this mapping by saying something like \"b = 2 * a\". Then if you took the number 7 from (A), you would get the number 14 in (B). The fact that you can form this mapping means that the infinity of (A) and the infinity of (B) are equal.\n\nNow take set (D), every possible number. Mathematicians have proven that you cannot form a mapping from (A) to (D), because there are way too many elements in (D). That means the infinity of (D) is larger than the infinity of (A).\n\nIn aleph terminology, (A) is alpeh 0, and (D) is aleph 1. \n\nInterestingly, anything that's aleph 0 is said to be \"countable\". Anything above aleph 0 is said to be uncountable, since they cannot be mapped to the counting numbers."
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ouclj | zen buddhism | I read through D. T. Suzuki's "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism" and I've looked at some Eihei Dogen's writings, and I still have absolutely no idea what is up with this shit. Why are there absolutely no agreements between different Masters? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ouclj/eli5_zen_buddhism/ | {
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" > Why are there absolutely no agreements between different Masters?\n\nReality cannot be expressed in words, or thoughts, but can be directly experienced. *Thinking* is a very new phenomenon in the world's development, humans have no skill whatsoever in turning it off. *Thought* is an apt tool but an ill master.\n\nAlan Watts is probably the best intro, he has many lectures available on youtube or podcasts. But listening to him will get you nowhere, and there is no particular reason you should believe him.\n\nI suggest meeting a Zen teacher, or any long term meditator. They're awesome people, and there is something deep, simple and authentic you recognise immediately in face to face conversation.\n\nBut you don't even have to do that. Roll your chair away from your desk, spend five minutes listening to your mind. Thinking mind is capable of navigating oceans or understanding relativity, but I daresay you will find that your mind is filled with idle, petty chatter.\n\nSometimes it breaks my heart\n\nto watch my mind – \n\ncold self-interest,\n\ninsistent fear and judgment, \n\nwhispered insults,\n\nvengeful fantasies,\n\ntriumph and despair.\n\n\nA conditioned unfolding\n\nso impersonal\n\nwe take it personally.\n\n\nSometimes aghast\n\nat the casual cruelty\n\nof even minor fears\n\nand celebrations. \n\n\nSometimes it breaks my heart\n\nto watch my mind.\n\n\nAnd sometimes it stays broken\n\nlong enough to touch\n\neven this pain\n\nwith love.\n\n\nSometimes the mercy washes\n\neven Mrs. Macbeth’s hands,\n\nturns tragedy to grace,\n\nand makes it all worthwhile.\n\n\nSometimes it breaks my mind\n\nto watch my heart.\n\n",
"I took a Philosophy 210 class my first year of college. This class went over a bunch of different world religions. When we got to the Buddhism/Zen Buddhism portion of the semester, they were the shortest chapters in the book. The point is to go out and LIVE this religion. It's less of a religion and more of a way of life. Could you agree on every single aspect of how to live you life with someone else? Christians can all pray on Sundays, but could you convince all Zen Buddhists to poop on Tuesdays? That's Zen Buddhism. Trying to understand yourself, and that you can't just poop every Tuesday. You will poop on some Tuesdays, but not all of them.",
"Because you're reading a Rinzai Zen scholar (DT Suzuki) and a Soto Zen monk (Dogen). Two sects, two schools. \n\nZen is a sect of Buddhism that is Mind to Mind transmission outside the Scriptures. This doesn't mean it doesn't use scriptures. It only means it's not founded on them. \n\nWhen Buddha twirled a flower and Mahakashyapa smiled in silent understanding, that was \"Mind to Mind\" transmission. It means that the Mind of the Master is imprinted on the Mind of the Student. But it's better to say that there is only One Mind (the term Chinese Zen Masters used). \n\nThis One Mind is not thinking, it is not consciousness. This \"Essence of Mind\" as Hui Neng called it, is what Zen adepts try to directly witness, fuse with. It is like this: thinking is the waves, and the Essence of Mind is the ocean. So, what are your thoughts \"made of\"? What is their source? - \n\nYou can start your Zen journey by simply asking yourself: \"What was my original face before my parents were born?\" - Or, mommy and daddy were born, considering the Subreddit we're in. Anyway, the way of Zen is in the realisation that - since thinking is the waves, and the source - essence - one mind is the ocean itself, how can producing more and more waves make you realize the ocean? \n\nOr, let's say the ultimate reality is a moon instead, reflected on the waters. You won't get it by grabbing it, by thinking; the more you \"catch\" it the more waves you produce. It is when you abandon discriminative thinking that the waves cease and the waters calm, and you can see the imprint of reality, the Moon reflected on your internal mirror.\n\nThat's the best I can do in this format here.",
"Zen is not something that you're meant to understand philosophically or abstractly. Zen masters intentionally say things that are confusing or inconsistent to try to get that point across to you. \n\nZen is a practice, above all else.",
"[I'll just leave this here](_URL_0_)",
"Children at age 5 don't need Zen to be explained to them. Children are not the problem of Zen. The primary objective (As far as I've discerned) of Zen is to get adults out of the delusions in their heads that they've picked up over the years. To explain Zen to a child, is like explaining to a dog what inhibitions you had to overcome to pee in public. They won't understand, and when they do, they don't know why you bothered in the first place. [Please watch this before you continue](_URL_0_)\n\nA Zen Master is not (or should not be) a priest or a theorist with a method that competes with other methods which can then be taught or simplified. If it's a philosophy, it's the philosophy of Socrates, trying to give birth to wisdom in people. They are like village idiots or court fools, trying to show the people that their social codes are not to be taken seriously. Children, when raised with compassion, do this all the time. They often learn not to though.\n\nAt the same time, they are the Eastern equivalent of the psychologist, where people who can't take the pressure anymore go to, to get release.\n\nAs such, there really is little point in studying the theory of Zen or read books about Zen, except in relation to the extremely formal and polite Chinese and Japanese society. When those cultures change, Zen had to change. Yesterday's profound realizations become tomorrow's narrowmindedness. \n\nThe people who come to Zen masters are often highly sophisticated people, with a philosophy or a religion, expecting someone as respected to be called Master to explain the One Secret to them. What would you tell them?\n\nWhat Zen mostly does, is wait until people come over with questions. If it's a profound and complex one, point to something obvious and simple. If it's a simple one, answer with a reference to a complex philosophy.\n\nAnother way to do this is to make requests or give answers that defy basic logic so completely, that the attempt to understand them becomes meaningless. When you give up, your brain should become clear and empty, like the Bhudda's. With this in mind, reading koans should become much more enjoyable.\n\nIn art it's like haiku's, which started as a Japanese reaction to the complicated poetry of China at that time, that would go on for pages and pages. It's like Minimal Art, only Asians beat the West to it again, by a large margin of centuries. Zen, likewise, is minimal philosophy.\n\n\nIf you have trouble picking up those themes, I strongly recommend you check out Alan Watts. You can read his books, but he has given lectures of a high quality.He was largely responsible for the popularization of Bhuddism in the west, because he could relate it to ideas in theology and philosophy of the West. \nIf you are familiar with either, I'd say start with the [The Nature of Consciousness](_URL_1_) series. Continue with the the Myth and Religion series. If you want a short trailer with an intro, go back up to the first link."
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69n8uo | why do pictures of the stars from telescopes along with photos of most light sources appear to have horizontal and vertical lines through them resembling crosshairs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69n8uo/eli5why_do_pictures_of_the_stars_from_telescopes/ | {
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"Aren't those the result of diffraction on the secondary mirror holder?",
"The lines are called \"diffraction spikes\", and they are caused by light waves being interfered with by the structure or shape of the camera or telescope. \n\nThe most common one in star photographs is four spikes. Many star photos are taken with a reflector telescope, which has a mirror mounted inside it - usually on four wires or thin pieces of metal (called vanes). Starlight hitting these 4 supports bounces around and creates the spikes. Some telescopes have different numbers of mirror mount vanes, creating different numbers of spikes.\n\nDiffraction spikes can also be caused by the non-circular shape of the opening in a camera lens, which is the same effect but more difficult to explain (at least for me). "
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b6xg1m | if the water cycle is a closed system, why does it matter that a pound of beef takes 1800 gallons of water to produce? | Its all going to be recycled back intonthe system anyway, right? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b6xg1m/eli5_if_the_water_cycle_is_a_closed_system_why/ | {
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"It's a matter of clean/potable water. The water used to produce beef must be potable, and ends up non-potable, so that puts an enormous strain on the availability of clean water in an area. Yes, it does go back into the water cycle, but it takes a long while for it to make its way back to a drinkable state. ",
"It is, but not all water is _potable_ water. \n\nIt takes energy to take undrinkable water and turn it into water that can be consumed by animals. When the water is used to grow the crops or water the cattle, it returns to the system undrinkable, which creates two problems:\n\n- If the source water was potable, then the potable water source may become depleted faster than it can be replenished.\n\n- If the source water was not potable, then additional energy must be expended to purify more of the water source. ",
"It doesn't matter in many parts of the world - if water is drawn from the river, used to irrigate fields and then it returns to that river later on (or even better when no additional water is needed because rainfall is enough) it's all good.\n\nIt matters e.g. in parts of the US where deep underground sources of perfectly drinkable water (that was closed there millions of years ago) are used for irrigation on a desert - that water will evaporate quickly and return to the system, but in other, distant places, not there. That water used to supply drinkable water to people living there would last many thousands of years, used for agriculture will run out in less than 100. This is just unsustainable like burning coal or oil.",
"It matters because our rate of consumption of water often exceeds the water cycles ability to replenish it, especially on the regional scale. Also collecting, treating, and transporting water before and after use takes energy and resources. ",
"The Potable / Unpotable thing is very correct.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe other problem is however, that the vast majority of our drinking water comes from underground aquifers. Wells, and large pump stations bring water up and disperse it. (For instance, Vegas is almost completely supplied by a gigantic underground aquifer.)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nWhen we use a ton of water on cows, crops, or other things, it gets contaminated (Urine/Feces/Pesticides/ect)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThat water than goes back into the ground. Now, the idea is that it eventually finds its way through the ground back into the aquifers. And by filtering through a couple hundred feet of rock it will be pure water again - that is part of the water cycle.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe issue is... we pump out far more water than returns to the aquifers. It can take hundreds of years for that water to return to the aquifer. In the meanwhile, California or Nevada or wherever still needs to drink water. So they keep pumping water out.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nDuring the droughts on the west coast, where they restrict water usage, it's not *just* because it's not raining. Its not raining, and that's not refilling the aquifers that are being used to supply the city. When they get too low, there are water restrictions put in place to prevent too much water from being used.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn addition to all that, the Water system is **global**. Yes, all the water returns. Its a closed system after all, being the Earth. It really can't go anywhere else.\n\nYet... just cause water returns eventually, doesn't help individual locations. When the water runs out of a well in a desert, it doesn't do you any good that the water you spilled evaporated and returned to the system. You need water now, or you'll die in a few days. The system takes far longer periods to return water to the sources we use for drinking, and that is what the main problem with using 1800 gallons of water for a single cow. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nA single cow will feed a family of four for about a year (give or take, if they eat the average amount of red meat a day, and of course use produce and more). \n\n & #x200B;\n\nA family of four will probably drink/use about 300-400 gallons of water in a year. (Drinking/Cooking ... maybe not washing? -- Reaaaaaall guesetimate here, based only on some very quick and dirty googling) Water being infinitely more important to survival than red meat... that's why people make a big deal about 1800 gallons for one cow. ... and that's not even including the water it took for vegetables they would eat with said cow in the above example (but people have to eat, and water to vegetable is a much better ratio than water to red meat, so that's kinda acceptable. People don't *need* beef.)",
"It might help by thinking of an analogy with money: if financial transactions don't destroy money, just move it from one person to another, why does it matter how much anything costs?\n\nThink about why the one matters, and it might help with the other."
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2n7avu | why do you have to turn most jeans and some other clothing inside-out when washing them...? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n7avu/eli5_why_do_you_have_to_turn_most_jeans_and_some/ | {
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"Because the the agitation of the washer and the tumble of the dryer tend to beat clothes up. By turning them inside out, they beat up the inside which isn't when you wear them. This keeps them looking new longer. \nIn the case of printed t-shirts it keeps the printing in good shape longer. ",
"You're supposed to turn clothes inside out?? I always thought it was the opposite, since it's the outside getting dirty (except for maybe underwear).",
"It's best for shirt with writing/printing on it, especially if it's the plasticy type of design; the washer does damage clothes just a smidgen with all the agitation and etc., and turning it inside out makes sure that the inside (that nobody would see) would get the brunt of it, so any fading to the outside (that everyone sees) is kept to a minimum. It's mainly to prevent fading/damage to the outside of the garments, which is visible to everyone.\n\nYou don't have to do it for all garments, I'd only really do it for shirts/pants with lettering/designs."
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2witly | could someone please explain to me "bell's non-locality theorem"? | Cannot understand the wiki... Thanks for you time. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2witly/eli5_could_someone_please_explain_to_me_bells/ | {
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"There is no way a five year old can understand the Bell Theorem; sorry.\n\nI can still try to explain it, but not necessarily on ELI5 level. \n\nIn quantum mechanics, things are a bit different than in the macroscopic world. \nFor one, QM processes are not deterministic, but probabilistic. That means, that it is not possible to predict the outcome of an experiment; it is only possible to assign probabilities to different outcomes.\n\nThere are two different options why this is the case:\n\n* There are so called local hidden variables that we have not yet discovered. Those variables determine the outcome, rendering QM deterministic again.\n\n* QM is truly random. There are no variables that govern the outcome.\n\nIt turns out that we can actually test whether those local hidden variables exist. \n\nThis test is Bells Inequality. If it is violated, there are no local hidden variables.\n\nOur testing has indeed suggested, that the inequality is being violated, thus QM is truly random.\n\n\nI suggest you watch [this](_URL_1_) video from MinutePhysics for further explanation of determinism and probabilism; and [this](_URL_0_) video from Veritasim on the actual Bell Theorem. Both of these videos do a really good job explaining the phenomena. "
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6idock | how do "game rooms" and other illegal casinos get away with it for so long in places where gambling is illegal i.e. texas | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6idock/eli5_how_do_game_rooms_and_other_illegal_casinos/ | {
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"It probably varies based on the location, but in Texas some of them are basically skirting the rules. They have a membership to go in and play, and don't take a cut, so it effectively becomes just people getting a place to gamble against other people, which is legal.\n\nIn other cases, the casino is on a reservation. That's technically considered tribal lands, and isn't subject to state regulations."
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bzz7ad | what happens to stomach acid once food is ready to move to the next step of digestion? how does the body dispose of it without causing harm to itself? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bzz7ad/eli5_what_happens_to_stomach_acid_once_food_is/ | {
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"The acid moves with food but the pancreas secrete a bicarbonate solution to neutralize the acid so the food can be digested without making wholes in the intestine. \n\nAlso digestion occurs in an alkaline environment. And then you just kinda poop it all out. (Minus nutrients and water etc.)",
"If you mix an acid and a base, you get salt and water. Your stomach has hydrochloric acid. It also has a special lining that protects it from acid. Food and acid then goes from your stomach to the duodenum. There is another connection from your pancreas to the duodenum. The pancreas secretes a base called bicarbonate. This neutralizes the hydrochloric acid."
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2a0prv | what is the white stuff on my tongue and where does it come from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a0prv/eli5_what_is_the_white_stuff_on_my_tongue_and/ | {
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"Bacteria and debris. Comes from eaten food and dead cells. You should clean your tongue more often, as it isn't supposed to be white.",
"Bacteria and dead cells. It's probably on the inside of your cheeks and lips as well. The easiest way to get rid of it is to get a moist towel and \"brush\" the inside of your mouth with the towel, then brush your teeth and use mouthwash. Your mouth will probably feel much much cleaner than when you just brush your teeth.",
"Could be Oral Thrush (Oral Candidiasis). A dentist can prescribe some anti-fungal mouth wash. "
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3o5vfd | how is medicine made/dispensed at a pharmacy? | I am pretty sure they don't keep a bottle of every medicine or a pill for every thing. or do they? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o5vfd/eli5how_is_medicine_madedispensed_at_a_pharmacy/ | {
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"For most common things, sure. A normal corner pharmacy probably stocks 1,000's of different pills and liquids. For uncommon things, they have it shipped in from the manufacturer. My wife has prescriptions that are overnighted directly to our house in cold containers.",
"I used to run the inventory at a chain grocery store pharmacy. Common drugs we kept in bulk, 500-1000 tablet bottles. More expensive, or less common drugs I kept smaller bottle sizes in stock. The goal was to turn over the inventory budget a certain number of times per month. If my inventory was 180k and our regional manager wanted us to turn that dollar figure over say 2 times per month then we'd be expected to sell 360k worth of inventory. I don't recall my actual turnover goals, it's been too long.\n\nLike u/worlocktx said, we would often special order things that were exceedingly expensive, rare, or required special storage.\n\nLocal retail pharmacies also make some creams based on doctor orders, they're called compounds. Usually it's a recipe like 1:1 hydrocortisone 2.5% and triamcinolone 0.5% or something- a mixture of common prescription creams. Other times it might be a normal cream with a certain % of menthol or salicylic acid added.\n\nSpecialty pharmacies, or compound pharmacies make actual oral medications or suppositories, but your typical retail pharmacy doesn't get into that stuff.\n\nThen there is nuclear pharmacy, but that's a different world all together. ",
"Most of the drugs come packaged and ready to dispense. Some of them are even pre measured and come boxed. \n\nThe types of things a pharmacist might have to make on the fly are things like syrups or injection vials. For instance codeine cough syrup doesn't generally ship in 2 liter bottles. They have the base ingredients like sweetener, alcohol, coloring, filtered water etc. You can often see them preparing these at special stations where they push a bottle onto an opening and it pneumatically clicks out measured doses you can hear hissssCLICK hisssCLICK. If the syrup calls for other drugs like Guaifenesin they can add that as needed etc. \n\nSometimes they get it wrong without affecting the medicinal qualities. I remember once I got a cough syrup prescription for strep throat and they must have forgot to add the sweetener because while I'd had that prescription a few times before and it was sweet and thick, that time it was so bitter and foul as to be nearly unpalatable. I had to drink 2 glasses of water after taking 2 teaspoons. \n\nThe rest of their job is in knowing drugs, how they work, dangerous interactions between the drugs, to spot potential abuse like doctor shopping, drug seeking behavior, etc, and to answer questions for patients. \n\nYour GP might know not to prescribe viagra and heart medication together, but if they messed up, the pharmacist is there to go 'That's not quite right, these two things should not be taken together\". "
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1mwj1q | how did "special head" on america's got talent do his levitation act? | Here is a link to his act: _URL_0_
I watched it a few times, but I just don't get it. Anyone know what is going in the act? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mwj1q/eli5_how_did_special_head_on_americas_got_talent/ | {
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"This is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Most magicians will [know what's going on](_URL_0_) the instant they see he's using a stick. ",
"It appears to be a variation of the traditional version of this that street performers do:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nBasically he has a bar in his arm and around his back to hold his weight (must have some special apparatus to allow him to stand beforehand. It's probably bulky which is why he moved so slowly) and the staff connects to a base beneath the carpet, so his entire weight is distributed and he doesn't have to lift any of it.\n\nThere's no way the show runners didn't know how this was done since they had to help put out the heavy metal plate and the rug to cover it up.",
"The 'carpet' actually has a strong (likely steel) base, and the 'cane' is probably strengthened (likely with a steel rod) inside. The cane connects securely to a specific point on the carpet so that weight/force applied to the cane can be transferred to the carpet base, keeping the cane from falling over. Inside the magician's left sleeve is a metal attachment (that can be secured to and detached from the cane), this attachment is connected to a seat-like contraption inside the magician's robe (resulting in limited mobility). "
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1ltjo9 | how do hypnotists make people do stupid things on stage? | I understand general hypnosis is mostly a state of intense focus or relaxation, like when you are at the climax of a good book and you can't hear someone talking to you because you are so involved in whats going on, but I have no idea how you get someone to act like a chicken or what not and then have them not remember at all. Is everyone just pretending? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ltjo9/eli5_how_do_hypnotists_make_people_do_stupid/ | {
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"They're not really pretending. The brain has a great capability to trick itself...if it wants to. The object of stage 'hypnosis' is to make the subject want to fool themselves.\n\nIf you got up on stage, firmly set that you wouldn't do anything the hypnotist wanted, it wouldn't work. The only reason it does is because the audience members approach it wanted to be hypnotized.",
"Can anyone explain to me how this works?\n\n_URL_0_",
"I used to do hypnosis when I was in Year 12, I uses to experiment with how it works and I always asked the person how they felt afterwards. In my experience I found out its actually something pretty hard to explain, it is a combination of it being fake and real basically it’s not what people expect it is .This is probably the easiest way I can explain it.\n\n\nBasically hypnosis is a bit like extreme relaxation mixed with acting but it works by passing the part of the brain that say “ should I do this yes or no” and just does it. Kind of like when you are tired or drunk and you just do things without thinking. \n\nThe beginning steps of hypnosis such as magnet fingers and magnet hands are used to lure the person into a sense of security until they expect hypnosis. During the whole thing the hypnotist will constantly talk. This makes them focus on your speech to a point where it’s the only thing they can hear. During these beginning steps the person is not hypnotised but instead the hypnotist are just acting like they are making it happen. They do this because it create this concept in the brain where if the hypnotise is right about this he must be right about everything else he says.\nThe hypnotist will be selective with his speech such as being more dominate, such as telling them to do something rather than asking “ stand up” rather than “ can you please stand up”. This gives the illusion that you are in control. The hypnotist will also like words with actions or feelings such as “ as your arm falls you will feel more relaxed and you will go deeper into hypnosis. This creates conditioning. BUT eventually the person being hypnotised gives in and their subconscious takes control, allowing the hypnotist to speak directly to the subconscious part of the brain. At this point The person is so focused on the voice and believes everything they say, everything becomes real. That’s why you can do stuff like make people into statue, they think they are a statue because I said they were, there subconscious believes me . On a deeper level they know they can move but they believe the hypnotise so much at this point they can’t fight it (they can but they don’t want to).\nPretty much it works because it believe it works through conditioning. And when it does work you can do some amazing stuff you can mess with any of their senses, I made people hallucinate, forget their name, change their sense of taste even do things like turn myself invisible. \n\n\n"
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7sy2ax | how bacteria appears in its enironment? | For example salmonella has best chances to be in eggs. How does the bacteria appear in there. where di it came from? Is it in the air and egg is just the best environment for it? Or is it in the egg "by default"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7sy2ax/eli5_how_bacteria_appears_in_its_enironment/ | {
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" > Or is it in the egg \"by default\"?\n\nFirst the chicken needs to have salmonella living in it, and then the bacteria can enter the egg as it is forming in the oviduct of the chicken.",
"Thanks for the answers guys",
"There are two ways salmonella can get in eggs. One is if the chicken has salmonella on it's ovaries or in its ovaducts - that can get an infection in the egg sack before the shell is formed. The other is if there is salmonella on the shell, like from the chicken's own poop. (Interestingly, these are different kinds of salmonella.) The eggs (in the U.S.) are washed and sanitized after they are collected to help prevent this from travelling through the pores in the shell in to the inside of the egg. Unfortunately, that also removes some of the protective coating of the shell, so they are vulnerable to more infection.\n\nEggs infected from the inside don't tend to start with too much of the bacteria in them - not enough to make you sick. This is why eggs are cooled quickly after being collected - it prevents the bacteria from reproducing, both that was already in there or gets on the shell after washing."
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25smg0 | why does bring your knees up to your chest relieve stomach pain? | Just wondering how bringing your knees up to your chest relives stomach pain. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25smg0/eli5_why_does_bring_your_knees_up_to_your_chest/ | {
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"Something along the lines of: when you bend your knees up to your abdomen, it relieves the pressure inside your abdominal cavity that is causing the pain (usually triggered by the nerves in the lining of the abdominal cavity rather than from organs, themselves)\n\nEdit: Textbook answer:\n\"A patient with severe abdominal pain will often...draw his knees up toward the chest, and breathe fast and shallowly to reduce the movement of the diaphragm. The condition usually involves irritation of the peritoneum (lining of the abdomen\" (Brady Prehospital Emergency Care, 9th edition)",
"Back in the day before the modern sitting toilet we used to generally squat with heels on the ground when using the toilet for number 2. In Asia the [squatting toilet](_URL_0_) is also a big thing which uses the squatting posture. This type of posture puts pressure on the upper part of the digestive system, and sorta pulls opens the lower, large intestine to be less kinked. With this you can imagine how it helps relieve pressure when you bring your knees up to your chest.\n\nCheck this out:\n_URL_1_",
"As someone pointed out could be because it relieve/change pressure to certain areas.\n\nIt really depends on your kind of illness.\n\nPostural analysis is actually one of the factors doctors keep under consideration to diagnose an illness since patients assume different position to relieve pain in different area/caused by different causes.\n"
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2jvbml | why do old people always put those bright green tennis balls on their walkers? | Is it a cultural thing? Does Wilson have a manufacturing deal with walker companies to put tennis balls on the bottom of each walker in America?
What is the origin of this? Who first started doing this? And why tennis balls as opposed to say, baseballs?
[Here's a picture of what I'm talking about.](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jvbml/eli5_why_do_old_people_always_put_those_bright/ | {
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"its to make it easier to push along a carpet and less risk of catching or buffing wooden floors ",
"The tennis balls help with traction so the walker can slide easily while the person is walking, especially if it doesn't have wheels. \n\nTennis balls have a nice slippery but not too slippery surface and are conveniently hollow and easily cut (unlike baseballs), so you can modify them for use with a walker.",
"They're defeating a safety feature for convenience."
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2mqfpf | why does sleeptalking happen? like, why do our in-dream actions correspond with our real ones? | Why is it that when I can't speak in a dream, I say it out loud? What does my dream self have to do with my real self? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mqfpf/eli5_why_does_sleeptalking_happen_like_why_do_our/ | {
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"It's your body not completely disengaging your body from your brain during dream state. Call it a mild form of sleep walking. Ever get those ticks in your arms or legs as you fall asleep? This is your mind \"testing\" to see if it has disengaged from your body. I don't remember the specifics from the lecture but i'm sure somebody will fill in the gaps better."
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3bunxy | why do rich people always pursue more money? isn't there a ceiling in which they can already have everything they've ever wanted/needed? | I've spoken to some people and I get a lot of opinions. To some degree I assume this question only has opinionated answers, but I was hoping to hear an explanation of the reason behind needing so much more. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bunxy/eli5why_do_rich_people_always_pursue_more_money/ | {
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"There was a [study](_URL_0_) that showed most people need $75K a year to reach financial happiness. That's enough to be very secure, and never really have to worry about money except for really big purchases. Having more money than that doesn't really help happiness levels. \n\nThere is another factor though, plenty of people like to think they're better than other people; what better way to measure it than money? In that case it's not so much that they gain more happiness out of having the money, but from the fact they are able to earn it; in much the same way most people enjoy winning competitions.",
"Of course people are taking the negative side, here's another observation:\n\nSome people don't do it for the money. Some simply want to continue running businesses and creating products to help form the world. ",
"for people with a shitton of money, money is its own reward. \nthey dont think \"I need 2 million more dollars to get by this month\" they think \"collecting money is rewarding, let me collect more because its fun.\" Its like collecting all the issues of Superman or getting all the steam achievements, seeing more and more digits on their bank statement is a rush. \n\ngranted this is not ALL rich people but it is many of them.\n\non a side note: this may not be the right answer (I am by no means anywhere close to that level of wealth) but whatever the answer is I know it is not \"because they are evil, greedy pricks who like to ruin other people's lives.\" People hoarding wealth like this is a problem, but if you want to fix a problem you have to think of the people causing the problem as people and try to truly understand their motives as the first step in making the world right.",
"**The hedonic treadmill**, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n----------\n\nAlso money is power. You can change the world if you have insane amounts of money, e.g, Bill Gates and malaria.",
"If you are very good at running, and win the olympics, do you stop running just because you already won the gold medal?\n\nMany rich people are, or believe they are, very good at making money. People usually like to do things they are, or believe they are, good at.",
"Its just like being at a gym, working out. You'll look at guys who have those perfect bodies and think \"what are you guys still doing here? your job is done!\" But no, it's not. Once you get into pumping iron, that's all you wanna do. You wanna do better than you did yesterday. You wanna do more reps in less time and what not.",
"$1 million seems like a lot of money. I'll be set when I have $1 million.\n\nShit, $1 million is hardly enough to have a decent retirement, I need $2 million.\n\nHmm, $2 million is nice, but I could have a nice cottage on the lake travel to Europe regularly if I had $4 million.\n\nWell, $4 million is good, but what if the market crashes or I have a terrible health problem? I need $6 million to be safe.\n\nAnd this can go on and on. No matter how much you have, there is always something more you could have or could achieve with more money. Most people are subject to this way of thinking.\n\nI would be willing to bet that even very wealthy people who have given billions to charity would fire their money manager if he happened to fall short of his benchmark return a couple years in a row. Even people who just want more money to give away still want more money.",
"Donald Trump said it best -\"Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.\"\nTo the very rich it's just a way to rank yourself among other very rich people.",
"It is a mistake to think that rich people are only focused on the money. I spend a lot of time with Venture Capitalists. Most of the ones I meet drive basic cars and wear t-shirts - even if they have enough money to buy private jets [don't get me wrong, some buy crazy yachts too]. Most of the ones I know are just truly passionate about building businesses. That involves taking huge risks and there have to be rewards with that risk. \nThat money also lets them place big bets on things that might be simply fun to invest in (wineries) even if they might not make much money. \n \nOthers want to use the money to have an impact on their community. I know very successful founder/investor that has single-handedly (and extremely quietly) built a network of schools and after-school programs across the state. Growing that is his motivation. \n \n \nThink of it this way, why do NBA players still keeps score when playing basketball just like you and I do? They are amazing at basketball, they don't need to prove it, right? Well, they do it because that is what makes it interesting. \n \nFurthermore, \"the rich\" are not a monolithic hive mind. Just like everyone, they have different motivations. Some good, some bad. ",
"Why do people still play WoW after they have hit the level cap?",
"By chance, are you referring to the NBA draft? Something like 1.4 billion promised in a day.",
"Many people here use some version of \"rich people are all evil power hungry assholes\" - which is sadly very widespread nowadays. \n\nThe answer in short is \"human wants are unlimited\". It is in our nature that we want to realize our values.\n\nA very simple concretized example is video games. \nIf you play a good one, you don't just say \"okay, I'm satisfied now, I will play this level over and over forever because it's good enough for me\". \nYou want to go to the next level. \nOnce you reach you become very good at one task, you want to do something more complicated. \nIf you have been a manager for 5 years, you want to manage on a higher level, because your job became repetitive. \nMaybe you are just already rich and like to invest your money to get more - so you attempt to get really good at investing. \n\n(btw, investing is not 'evil' in any way. It moves money to where it is required to create more value.) \n\n",
"wealthy people get in the habit of making money (through their job or investments) and usually enjoy doing it so once they reach a certain threshold why would they stop? like if you're 50 years old and have worked hard your entire life while making $200 million, there's no incentive to slow down if you're still enjoying what you do. too many people view wealth as though the wealthy received this money all at once rather than accumulating it over years and years of work so people without obscene amounts of money think: \"if I had $X million I would never work again\" while those who do have it think: \"I like where I'm at and I'm going to keep doing what got me here.\" obviously ego can play a role in this too but not very many of the ultra wealthy people in this world are power hungry monsters bent on world domination (as the general consensus in the media seems to be). \n\nbackground: I dated the daughter of an extremely wealthy man for a couple years and it was the most life changing experience I've ever had (good and bad). I no longer have the desire to be a billionaire.",
"So a lot of answers have just been mentioning the pursuit of wealth and hedonism, which is fine and true in its own ways.\n\nBut also realize that these people make money though their careers as CEOs and descision makers and leaders. Once they can make $X they could retire, but then they'd have no influence and nothing to do but sit around.\n\nFor example, think about it this way - if you were given $100 million and spent a year or two doing nothing but relaxing and traveling, would you end up wanting to do something productive and feel like you're contributing something? These rich CEOs and businessmen are often intelligent and can positively shape the world through the enterprises they manage, and that's just as important as the money. It doesn't always have to be just pure pursuit of unbridled wealth that drives their actions.\n\nOn the other hand, that is definitely the case in many of their lives, like people that make money off of intermediation in situations where they offer literally no benefit",
"Homer Simpson- Mr. Burns your the richest guy I know.\nMr. Burns- Yes, but I would give it all away for just a little more.",
"It probably has something to do with trying to reach their full potential. Understandably, most wealthy families are wealthy for a reason. They invented something or are just intelligent enough to exceed expectations, basically making them \"better\" than your average person (that sounds really bad but it's true, they are better at making money than most people). This leads them to compete with themselves. If they're already at the top, why compare themselves to people who make far less than them? As a great man once said, (lol jk it was hitler) \"Do not compare yourself to others. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.\" This essentially means that they are competing only against themselves, always trying to improve on what they have already accomplished. If they were to simply stop working and be satisfied with a 4 million dollar fortune, they would have nothing important to occupy their time with which would lead to an incredibly depressing life. If you aren't working to improve, you aren't really working.",
"I didn't understand this also until I played a game called Make it Rain: Love of Money in the app store. Basically you accumulate money by swiping it and use the money to buy perks to accumulate it even faster. I thought getting to a million was a milestone, but it felt small compared to having 100 million.",
"It's all relative. When you're 5, all you need to be happy is $2 for a candy bar. When you're 10 years old and you are dreaming of a new bike, saving $200 will get you all you want in order to be happy. When you're a teenager/young adult, the first \"real\" job you get and the salary that comes with it is so much better than making $10/hour that you feel rich. Then the next benchmark for happiness is a new car, then a house, wife, kids etc. Then at that point, why not shoot for a bigger house, a sports car, and a vacation home? \n\nIn reality, you need around $1 billion before you can really live however you want and not worry about money. Before that, you still might have to choose between a yacht and a private island. There is always a more expensive toy out there that you could have if you just had a little more money.",
"Rich people do not just buy THINGs. That is a luxury. The real drive is the security that wealth brings, opportunities (like education) for the young, opportunities to do good (like school activities or the new curtain for the NY met), investment opportunities to really do good (by creating jobs, products), and the power to tell the government to \"fuck off\" or I'll give a few million to your opponent next election.",
"Also children can play a big part for some people. Not only cost of upbringing, education, and supporting their careers but also inheritance. I never really understood rich people who say they will donate everything not leave anything for their children. I would want to leave everything to my children and make sure they would never want for anything after I died. I think the knowledge that my children futures were secure would provide me with a lot of peace of mind.",
"You can answer this by looking at your own life. \n\nJudging by the fact that you are writing this, you're a decently educated person whose needs are met and has easy access to technology. In other words, *you* are rich, compared to most humans. So, why do *you* keep pursuing more (money, better job, nicer stuff, bigger house)? You could probably work less, make less, consume less and still be totally fine. But you don't. Because it's never enough, is it? Other people always seem to be happier than you, don't they? You'd be a lazy failure if you didn't keep getting promotions and adding to your bank account, wouldn't you?",
"People who make tremendous amounts of money actually enjoy BUILDING the wealth... Not just having it. It becomes like a game to see how much they can make "
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23x4lr | if scientist can reach absolute zero what will it provide in the field of science and everyday living? | When I learned this a couple years back, this question pop into my head. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23x4lr/eli5_if_scientist_can_reach_absolute_zero_what/ | {
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"It would mean that a lot of our understanding of physics and chemistry is wrong so we'd have to do a lot of serious work to try to fix science. Absolute zero being impossible to reach is one of the most fundamental tenets of science right now, it would be a huge blow if it turned out to be possible.\n\nIt's impossible to say what the practical applications and stuff would be, since (as we understand things right now) it's not possible. We can't predict how it would be useful using our current theories, since our current theories say it's not possible."
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73xubc | if men are required to register with selective service, why not automatically have men registered when they turn 18? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73xubc/eli5_if_men_are_required_to_register_with/ | {
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"Because this way, you have to sign a document promising to go to war if needed so when they tell you and you say \"no\" they can force you. ",
"The US doesn't have a national citizen registry. It's entirely possible for people to exist that the government doesn't know about. Further, you're technically required by law to register for selective service even if you're an undocumented immigrant.",
"Some places do; at least, I was automatically signed up. I didn't know it was even possible, but I got a letter in the mail saying I was registered without doing anything. There was just an \"aknowledgment of registration\" card you're supposed to sign and keep.",
"The worst thing about this is getting a letter a couple weeks later saying thanks for volunteering...",
"Great part of having a physical disability is I'll never be drafted, cons: everything else.",
"Explain to me this as well. Feminists are fighting for women's rights, which I totally support, but should they not also be signing up for the draft? "
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203mro | if jupiter is made of gas and has no solid surface how did shoemaker-levy 9 make impact craters? / marks? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/203mro/eli5_if_jupiter_is_made_of_gas_and_has_no_solid/ | {
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"First, the center of Jupiter has such high pressure, it does become solid. But the impact marks aren't craters as much as an insane amount of energy disrupting the normal currents in which the gases flow around the planet. After a number of months, the currents resumed their normal flow, covering the impact sites.",
"The comet impacted the dense atmosphere. If you are moving fast enough even gasses might as well be solid. The marks were huge clouds of material and disturbed gas layers, and they dissipated eventually.",
"Like rocks thrown into a pond, the craters were temporary but left a mark as they hit. Like oil on water, the comet punched a hole to lower layers and stirred up the atmosphere.",
"They weren't craters so much as smoke/dust clouds. Remember that meteor that blew up over Russia last year? [This one.](_URL_0_) It exploded due to atmospheric drag and the resulting forces on the meteor, and the comet impacting Jupiter did the same thing."
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4n6dx7 | why is the sound quality at a drive through so bad? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4n6dx7/eli5_why_is_the_sound_quality_at_a_drive_through/ | {
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"You mean like the speaker to talk to the guy taking the order?\n\nThere isn't any incentive to make it good quality. it's not like your rocking out to some heavy metal through it. You're just talking to the guy. If you can understand the words the quality is fine enough.",
"That speaker has to be electronics and be outside all the time. Driving rain might get behind the grill, and there is inevitably damage that would occur over time. Rather than having high quality electronics for that application, one would choose something that's \"good enough\" for the need, allowing for replacement/repair costs over time."
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6i9p6s | why are side scrolling platformers almost always scrolling from right to left? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6i9p6s/eli5_why_are_side_scrolling_platformers_almost/ | {
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"What games are you thinking about...Mario and Sonic are left to right ?"
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23ejze | please eli5 ... why is the headrest part of most car's seats designed to be so angled forward? | it is so uncomfortable but I'm sure there must be a reason.
note: not children's car seats, I mean normal passenger seats. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23ejze/please_eli5_why_is_the_headrest_part_of_most_cars/ | {
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"I too am interested. It always hurts my neck/head/back. I just want a straight head rest!",
"I think the head rest is more for whiplash in the event of a car crash. It prevents your neck from being able to go too far back.",
"Headrests aren't there to rest your head against, but to protect you from whiplash or worse if you're in an accident. When a car decelerates VERY quickly (like in a head-on collision) and you are wearing your seat belt, then your arms and upper torso will fly forward very quickly. The three-point seat belt keeps you from flying through the windshield or splattering over the dashboard, but after it catches you, your body snaps backward very quickly. The quickest part to snap backwards is your head. Your body from the shoulders down is caught by the seat itself, but without the \"headrest\", your head would snap backwards over the seat while the rest of your body stays put. This would be really bad for obvious reasons. The headrest is angled forward so that when your head slams back against it at 60 mph, the headrest compressess, and your head stops when it is more or less over top of your shoulders.",
"Whiplash reduction. The distance between the back of a typical person and the head restraint (they are not called head rests) is called 'back set', and is spelled out in FMVSS 202A.\n\nTL;DR : they are not head rests, they are passive head restraints.\n\nSource: Wife was a design engineer for head restrains for the largest automotive seating supplier before becoming a powertrain engineer for one of the big 3."
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4xgfir | what would the pros and cons of having your kid learn an additional langauge when they're little in a special program? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xgfir/eli5_what_would_the_pros_and_cons_of_having_your/ | {
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"Do it. and this whole thing about there being peaks isn't so important. Learning at any age is GOOD. Spanish is a good language to know especially in USA. It will be useful to them. \n\nNot to mention that you are basically forcing them to use many of the same types of thinking required for algebra when learning grammar. I also found understanding grammar in a foreign language helped my own english grammar. \n\nYou are doing your kid a favour by exposing them to this at a young age. ",
"The only con is that you have to pay for it, and transport the kid to class. Language classes are worthwhile at all ages--it doesn't matter what age they start at, but the younger the better."
]
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[],
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3iyw3v | when i'm talking and all of a sudden air just halts, i nearly choke and can't talk for a second until i take a breathe? (with air still in my lungs) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iyw3v/eli5_when_im_talking_and_all_of_a_sudden_air_just/ | {
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"Are you sure it's not a mild panic attack?",
"This sounds like a medical problem. Ask at /r/AskDocs "
]
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[],
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||
8b204p | why do oceans exist? | What I mean is, why aren't oceans absorbed into the sea bed the way water is on a sandy beach? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8b204p/eli5_why_do_oceans_exist/ | {
"a_id": [
"dx3atzn"
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"text": [
"Oceans cannot be absorbed into the sea bed because below the sea bed there is bedrock and the water is already saturated within the sea bed. Open water sits on top of the water within the sea bed."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
3bmncf | the differences between synthetic marijuana and actual marijuana and why synthetic is apparently more dangerous. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bmncf/eli5the_differences_between_synthetic_marijuana/ | {
"a_id": [
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"Synthetic marijuana is in no way related to real marijuana. It is plant material that has been sprayed with one or more of any number of chemicals that happen to affect the same parts of the brain as the THC in real weed. It is dangerous because all it takes is to find a chemical that is an agonist of those receptors then sell it without further testing. Real weed has been tested for millennia and proven pretty safe. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2axlbd | the "power factor" of ac electric power and how it relates to things we use in the home and office | I am barely literate in things electrical, so my attempt at a ELI5 answer for myself (which may be totally wrong) is that if something has a motor in it (a washing machine, a fan) then the revolutions of the motor kind of don't match the revolutions of the generator at the power plant making the AC power. So you lose some power. If you use capacitors and such to fiddle with the timing, you can make the loss smaller.
Am I totally wrong or only 90% wrong? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2axlbd/eli5_the_power_factor_of_ac_electric_power_and/ | {
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"Alice buys stuff from Amazon and they ship it to her and she likes it and keeps it. Everyone is happy! Alice has a power factor of 1.0.\n\nBob buys stuff from Amazon and they ship it to him but he doesn't like half of it and returns it. Amazon likes that they're selling stuff to Bob, but they're kinda annoyed that they have to deal with all the shipping costs associated with the stuff that he returns. Bob has a power factor of 0.5.\n\nIf a device has a power factor of less than 1.0, it means that it is not actually consuming all the electrical power that is sent to it down the wire -- some of that power is reflected back into the grid. Utilities don't like it too much.",
"Imagine pushing a child on a swing. The swing goes back and forth. If you push at the right time, all of your effort goes to pushing the swing. If you push too at the wrong time, some of your effort is wasted.\n\nBuildings use a type of electricity called \"alternating current\". It is called that because the electric current oscillates back and forth, like the swing in the example above. With alternating current electricity, the voltage (another property of electricity), alternates just like the current does. Think of voltage as the \"push\" and current as the \"swing\". When these two are in sync with each other, you have a power factor of 1 (unity). When they are completely out of sync, the power factor is zero. This is like pushing when the swing is at its furthest point from you; all of your effort is wasted and no work gets done.\n\nA motor is an electromagnet that spins. An electromagnet is basically just coil of wire, also known as an \"inductor\". Inductors store energy in a magnetic fields. A capacitor is two metal sheets that are very close together but are not touching. Capacitors store energy in electric fields. The act of storing energy pulls the current out of sync with the voltage. Capacitors and inductors pull voltage and current out of sync in opposite ways, which is why you can use capacitors to correct for power factor losses caused by motors.\n\nIn your home this is not too much of an issue since the loads are relatively small, but in an industrial setting that uses lots of big motors, the power factor can get pretty far from unity. That is why some buildings will have capacitor banks installed outside near the electrical service: to correct the power factor losses from all of the inductive loads.\n"
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2wfnr5 | where do worms go in the winter? | I mean in cold weather climates where the ground freezes in the winter. Do worms just sorta freeze too and thaw in the spring? Do they all die and new ones hatch when the weather warms?
Edit: spelling, and yes I meant common earthworms. Thanks for the response! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wfnr5/eli5_where_do_worms_go_in_the_winter/ | {
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"If you're referring to earthworms, they simply go deeper into the ground. Even in harsh winters the ground doesn't usually freeze more than ~~an inch or two~~ a few feet deep, so the worms just burrow below the frozen layer and wait for a few weeks until it thaws out again.\n\n*Edit* corrected how deep the ground freezes. TIL, etc ..."
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7ab6yw | how does a company separate from a parent company, or rather, how is the parent company compensated for the lost value? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ab6yw/eli5_how_does_a_company_separate_from_a_parent/ | {
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"Any company, be it parent or a subsidiary/child company, has shares, meaning who owns the company (Simple way to imagine it would be- if a company has 100 shares, each share is 1% of the company, limited liability companies simply have owners, who own some % of the company). \n\nThe shareholders can be other companies, or physical people. If a majority of shares are owned by another company (more than 50%), it is a parent company.\n\nIn order for a subsidiary to gain independence from the parent, someone else needs to obtain a majority of shares from the parent. When people say that a company separates from it's parent company, it, most likely, means that the parent has sold its shares in the subsidiary and the subsidiary has a new majority shareholders, and the parent has been compensated for these shares.\n\nAlso, to discuss one of your examples, in case of Bungie, Microsoft retained its right to the Halo franchise, which was most of the compensation, while still remaining a minority stakeholder. So Bungie came to an agreement with Microsoft, that it would give up the franchise for it's own independence, since franchises like this are worth more than any physical assets the company might have had. \n\nYou might think that a large part of the value of the company came from the employees that worked and developed at Bungie, however people can't be classified as assets, therefore the only real value in the company were its franchises.",
"Corporations are owned by shareholders, who ultimately are the ones who need to be compensated. The most common form of compensation is to simply give shareholders of the parent company shares of the child company, too. So if you own 100 shares of Parent Conglomerate, you might own 100 shares of Parent Conglomerate and 50 shares of Child Specialty after a split. \n\nMcDonalds and Chipotle did something similar, allowing shareholders of McDonalds to choose which company they wanted to own shareholders of McDonalds could exchange McDonalds shares for Chipotle shares at a certain ratio (0.8879). \n\nThese sorts of plans are often carefully structured to avoid creating an income tax event for the shareholders. Since the shareholders own both companies after a split, they're compensated even though the parent company isn't directly compensated for the loss of the child firm. \n\nThe other major way is when the parent company sells its shares to a third party, who provides something of value to the parent in exchange for their stake in the child firm. It's usually money, but can be anything of value, like other assets, or taking on some of the parent company's debts along with the child firm. "
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7f2qpx | why when looking at a certain point without blinking for few seconds you start seeing double? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7f2qpx/eli5_why_when_looking_at_a_certain_point_without/ | {
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"Not everybody sees double. If you do, it is probably because your eyes get tired and stop looking in exactly the same direction. This is technically known as a strabismus."
]
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ew42wd | why does “cleaning” our ears with a cotton swab feel so good when we’re told not to put anything in them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ew42wd/eli5_why_does_cleaning_our_ears_with_a_cotton/ | {
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"A big part of the reason why it feels good is because that part of your body doesn’t experience the sense of touch very often (at least compared to the rest of your body) so the nerves in your ear have not become desensitised to that feeling.",
"Because you are touching the Vagus nerve. It's a cranial nerve and one of the longest in your body. It controls a lot of stuff, like heart rate and swallowing. Stimulation to this nerve can feel good! To the point that some women have reported to had orgasms from just stimulation to the Vagus nerve. This nerve is also the reason why touching your breasts and armpits can feel good, or makes you giggle.",
"EDIT: its been rightfully pointed out that this question does break our rule 2, thats my bad for being sleepy. Please use the report function to let us know sooner. \n\n\nThe below does still apply\n\nNotably rule 3: top level comments must be written explanations.\n\nThis means that comments consisting of just your personal experience, your best tips for ear cleaning, or a helpful/interesting side fact are not allowed at top level unless you have an actual explanation to OP's question.\n\nthank you and enjoy.\n\n(if you really only want to share your best tips/tricks for ear cleaning feel free to comment them on this sticky)",
"Several reasons. I found out the hard way that some people like me generate a little too much earwax in some weather. And using a q-tip is basically a guarantee you'll shove earwax against your eardrum. Severely deafening you and its much harder to clean out.\n\nUse a silicone me bulb (often used for baby's noses) and clean distilled warm water, washes out your ears and significantly less likely to damage anything inside!"
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2w574i | how are people born "geniuses"? | Like how are people just born with some special talent? Like is there something going on with their brain when they are born? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w574i/eli5how_are_people_born_geniuses/ | {
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"text": [
"Most of the time one part of the brain is different (worse than normal) and another part is overfishing to compensate. Or their brains just have more synapses. Can be a lot of other things too.",
"The actual answer is that we don't know.\n\nThe origin and nature of human intelligence and creativity is one of the most hotly debated subjects. Much of what has been written about it has been bullshit. You've just asked a question that hasn't been resolved with any kinda of clear explanation. Sorry.\n\nAlso, Einstein was a poop and vomit factory like all other babies."
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8x0f41 | why does a sudden influx of energy break objects? | Ive notice that when energy, specifically kinetic, is transfered in a short amount of time it tends to break things, but if added over a lot longer period it doesn't, like say I press against a wall a certain number of times pushing in then pulling out, compared to me just suddenly punching it or how gunpowder doesn't have that much energy stored but it's able to release it all at once causing damage with bullets, if it was energy alone wouldn't burning a piece of would be the most destructive thing in the world, it has way more energy or even how hard it is to jump 10 meters comapred to just walking up some stairs | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8x0f41/eli5_why_does_a_sudden_influx_of_energy_break/ | {
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"Newton's second law, F = ma. When a fast moving object is suddenly stopped, acceleration is very large and the resulting forces are enormous. If these forces exceed the yield strength of the material involved, the object breaks. Stop the same object travelling at the same speed over a longer time and you get smaller forces that are less likely to exceed the yield strength.",
"Well, energy = force * distance. \n\nLets look at a hammer. Lets say you exert 100N (~ 22.5 pounds) of force over a distance of 1m while swinging it. The energy at the end of the swing is thus 100J. Lets say you hit your finger and that energy is released over a distance of 1cm. To dissipate 100J in 1cm you need 10,000N of force(2,250 pounds of force). \n\nBasically, if you decrease the time/distance, you have to increase the forces to get the same amount of energy. If the object in question can't handle that force, the energy damages the object instead of accelerating it. "
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1umqm2 | why do heating pipes make a loud banging sound? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1umqm2/eli5_why_do_heating_pipes_make_a_loud_banging/ | {
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"Based on the one that sits next to our couch-bed in our very small NYC apartment, it is the expansion/contraction of the metal and wood around the heated pipes/radiator that cause the loud banging, pops, and cracks that occur as the heater heats up, loses heat, and heats up again.",
"This effect is called the [water hammer](_URL_1_). Randall Munroe [explained it](_URL_0_) better than I ever could.",
"There are usually two kinds of bangs that you hear in a steam radiator system.\n\nOne comes from different parts of the system expanding at different rates as they heat. The metal will make creaking sounds and parts which are snug, but not strongly attached will shift in relation to each other, sometimes causing them to jerk a bit causing pops.\n\nLoud bangs, sometimes called 'water hammers' happen when water condenses in a steam pipe and creates a clug which gets accelerated into some sort of junction where it suddenly comes to a halt. This is something which can damage and destroy a heating system."
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"http://what-if.xkcd.com/6/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_hammer"
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||
n85gv | the constitutional breaches of the national defense authorization act? | I understand the removal of Habeus Corpus is in violation of the Bill of Rights, but which of the Articles, if any? Article 1, Sec 8 allows Congress to make rules concerning capture, so it's legal in that sense. (Not to imply that it's just in any sense.)
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/n85gv/eli5_the_constitutional_breaches_of_the_national/ | {
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" > I understand the removal of Habeus Corpus is in violation of the Bill of Rights\n\nWhy?",
"5th amendment:\n\n > No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;\n\nEdit\n\n14th amendment as well:\n\n > nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law\n",
" > I understand the removal of Habeus Corpus is in violation of the Bill of Rights\n\nWhy?",
"5th amendment:\n\n > No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;\n\nEdit\n\n14th amendment as well:\n\n > nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law\n"
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2kp2wu | what makes something look modern? | Bonus: Why do things that once looked very modern (iPhone 4, for example) suddenly look antiquated when a newer version comes out (iPhone 5S). (same with iPhone 5S to iPhone 6)
Another example. My university recently got a new sciences building, and it looks modern as fuck. Its all boxy and juts out here and there. Why does this appear "modern?"
Bonus 2: Why is it that when I look at something that is considered modern (a "modern" style room, or even the new sciences building) I can already see how it will eventually look dated? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kp2wu/eli5_what_makes_something_look_modern/ | {
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"Because its boxy and white, grey, black, and made with concrete ",
"There's really nothing \"modern.\" The gist of it is that every period has \"modern\" styles. To our current day and age, sleek = modern. What sleek means is really curved edges, shiny, futuristic looking, etc.\n\nIn architecture, every age had it's modern look. There was the Gothic style a long time ago that was considered revolutionary. Same with the large, straight towers that we see a lot of buildings using. Then there was a move toward slightly curved, glass buildings. Now it's a move to make things look very \"odd\" but retain beauty.\n\nModern is less a style than a flavor of the month. If you'd like another example, look at the Tesla Model cars. If you were living in 1990, you'd say the look futuristic- when in fact, they're now modern. Modern is whatever everyone seems to do now and hasn't been done for a vague period of time. \n\nBonus 1: We only think things no longer look modern because modern = new. iPhone 4 is not new, it's old. iPhone 6 is new. New = Modern. (Even though Samsung already did it). Blame it on public perception of new v old and a great marketing campaign.\n\nBonus 2: Modern is subjective. When they were building it, it could have been modern then, but now is less modern. If you can already see how it will look dated, keep that in mind. It's a great thing to know when designing your future house."
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dq8wfx | sometimes when doctors flash light in your eyes, what do they exactly look for? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dq8wfx/eli5_sometimes_when_doctors_flash_light_in_your/ | {
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"Except for the ophthalmologist, they are looking to see that your iris contracts quickly to the bright light. This shows that the eye - > brain - > eye pathway is working. If it works on both sides, that reduces the likelihood of a whole class of problems.",
"To add to the answers here already, they are also looking for BOTH pupils contract simultaneously. If they shine a light in just your left eye both pupils should construct. If only the one receiving the light reacts it can be a sign of brain injury or other serious issues IIRC.",
"It's to see if the pupil dilates (pupil grows slightly) or to see any reaction to the light whatsoever. A lack of change when light hits the eye can mean brain damage that's one of the reasons they check it after a crash",
"* If you can look up, down, left, and right with both eyes, it means that 3 of your 12 cranial (brain) nerves are working because they control the muscles in your eyes. For example, the muscle that pulls your eye outwards (i.e., makes the right eye look right) is called the lateral rectus and it is controlled by the abducens nerve. If you can't look right with your right eye but you can look up down, left, etc., it means the abducens nerve isn't working, but the others are.\n\n* If they shine a light in your eye and your pupil gets smaller, it means that the nerve going back to your brain and the nerve going back to your eye are both working.\n\n* If they shine a light in your eye and your other eye's pupil gets smaller, it means that the nerve going back to your brain and the nerve crossing over to the other side of your eye is also working. The nerves cross over a bunch. For example, the right side of your brain receives the signals from the left side of your vision from both eyes. So the left half vision of your left eye and the left half vision from your right eye both go to the right side of your brain. So by giving a complete neurological exam where you see which things your eye can and can't do, you can figure out exactly where the problem is.\n\n* If one or more of these nerves isn't working, maybe you have a neurological disease like multiple sclerosis. Maybe there is something big like a tumor or aneurysm pressing down on the nerve causing it to malfunction. There is a place in your brain where your carotid arteries, your eye nerves, and your pituitary gland are all right next to each other.\n\n* If they use a special scope to shine light and look in your eye, they are looking to see if there are any abnormalities in your eye. For example, if you have enlarged blood vessels, weird bumps, or other issues, it can be a sign of heart disease, diabetes, or many other conditions. \n\n* Also, if they look at your retina, they are looking directly at your nerve. It's the only nerve that you can see in someone's body without cutting them open. Technically speaking, it's not even a nerve. It's an outgrowth of your brain and is part of the central nervous system (not the peripheral nervous system like all other nerves).\n\nDepending on the type of doctor, they can look for many things with lights in your eye. General practitioners just want to make sure your cranial nerves are working and make sure there are no obvious signs of illness. Neurologists have a bunch of tricks to exactly pinpoint what nerves are having problems. Ophthalmologists look for many eye related diseases, but also check for other systemic problems. Eyes are windows to the soul, but they are also windows into the brain and body as well.\n\nEdit: I only scratched the surface here. There are a bunch of other things (especially neurologic things) you can test with the eyes as well. The examples above are just to give you a flavor of what they are looking for."
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2muad7 | how do college degree concentrations work? | Hypothetically, if a student were enrolled as a "Business Administration: Marketing" student, would he be pursuing an bachelor's degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing, or a business marketing degree? Or a Bachelor's of Science, with some sort of concentration in business?
It's just the names that are throwing me off. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2muad7/eli5_how_do_college_degree_concentrations_work/ | {
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"First of all Bachelor of art and bachelor of science has more to do with the type of university or college you go to than what you are studying. For example, I go to BU and study chemistry, but will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree with chemistry...despite it clearly being science. It's because BU has so many liberal art requirements that my degree isn't a Bachelor of Science.\n\nThe difference between the two are the requirements set by the college for the degree. A bachelor of arts requires more liberal arts than a bachelor of science.\n\nAs for concentrations, concentrations are subtypes within the field. For example, my concentration is biochemistry. Basically, my degree is Chemistry: biochemistry. The difference is that I am required to take a few extra classes that the other chemistry majors in my class don't have to take (like Biochem II and another 400 level biology class).\n\nSo a business student concentrating on marketing would likely receive a degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing. You could probably receive it with either a BA or a BS just because you could take a varying range of supplementary classes for you major. The BA or BS is more dependent on the college and their graduation requirements and what they grant for a degree than anything else."
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2ozqhu | why does mcdonald's charge $3 for a mcmuffin & coffee, but $3.59 for just a mcmuffin? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ozqhu/eli5why_does_mcdonalds_charge_3_for_a/ | {
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"This is a marketing trick. It does two things. One, it's get you in the habit of ordering the grouped items (for other things like meals, it cost more). You will subconsciously do this in the future out of habit. \n\nTwo, if they add coffee then it sets you in the morning routing of going there. If you miss your coffee, then oh didn't get your egg sandwich and you pretty much missed breakfast. Remember, coffee is very cheep and addictive (believe it or not). This will also keep the buyer coming back every day. In the very short term, McDonalds looses pennies. In the long term, they gain a small fortune per person. ",
"They also do the same with McNuggets. 20 is more expensive than 2 orders of 10. ",
"Also a sausage biscuit with egg is like $2.59 but if you order a $1 menu sausage biscuit you can add egg for $.50"
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3ngni4 | what are "common sense" gun laws? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ngni4/eli5what_are_common_sense_gun_laws/ | {
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"In politics \"common sense\" means \"vague to the point everyone thinks I agree with them\".\n\nIt is a way to campaign against something without offering any real solutions of your own, because, hey, who can be against common sense?\n\nOnce details are provided, supporters start to realize what you consider common sense is different than what they do. Hopefully that happens after you get elected."
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3kq1hm | we donate to cancer research and treatments are getting better, but why do we still have to pay the enormous costs for said treatment? | My friends sister has cancer, her treatments cost about 100k and she needs 6 of them. I am beside myself with helplessness for her.
If we (as a nation) are doing all of these runs, races, telethons and fundraisers and all these things that drive dollars into cancer research, are we just in effect paving the way for new treatments the insurance companies and medical facilities can charge us more for that they did not invest in?
It just doesn't seem right. It seems like "we" are footing the bill on both ends and paving the way for new medical company profits.
How does this all work? Where do the various cancer charities proceed go? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kq1hm/eli5_we_donate_to_cancer_research_and_treatments/ | {
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"Cancer treatment costs *much more* than the amount being paid to the research centers. The donations are used to do investigations to discover new, better ways to treat cancers; but it does not include enough money to pay for the doctors, nurses, and hospital facilities used to treat hundreds of thousands of separate cancer patients.",
"The charity funding finds potential drug targets for treatment. Then, it literally costs billions of dollars for some pharmaceutical company to develop the drug, test the drug and take the drug through trials. For every drug that makes it into the clinic, there are dozens that fail to make it.\n\nA pharmaceutical company's return on investment is actually really small...even at those prices.\n\nIn other words, you are paying for all the failed research, too.",
"Most charity events seek to fund research looking to cure or treat cancer, and more effective methods of doing these things. This money goes into research labs for equipment, cultures, testing materials, upkeep of the facility, and paying the researchers' salaries among other things.\n\nThe money that is spent on cancer treatment goes to the institution doing the treatment, usually a hospital, and this money goes into the cost of the treatment, the facility overhead, and the salaries of the healthcare workers; possibly some insurance stuff goes on too.\n\nResearch for new methods of treating cancer does not necessarily mean the new methods will be more cost efficient, and updating current facilities to use the new methods (be it new equipment or new chemical cocktails) costs money as well. There's also training and re-educating/updating current professionals on the new research to take into account, though this is usually done pretty rapidly as medicine is too rapidly changing to not have the professionals continue their education on it.\n\nThere are probably many points that I missed, but I hope this helps you understand that while the two are related, the money only funnels into one or the other."
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572010 | if whatsapp chats are encrypted then how facebook is going to collect data from whatsapp chats for targeted advertising? | When WhatsApp introduced chat encryption feature, we were told that the chats will be end to end encrypted. Now how they are going to enforce their new TOS if chats are really encrypted? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/572010/eli5_if_whatsapp_chats_are_encrypted_then_how/ | {
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"Theoretically, if they are using end to end encryption correctly, no-one, Facebook included, can read the messages other than the sender and recipient(s). Now what is NOT encrypted is the meta-data. Meta-data, in comparison with an email, is basically like all the stuff that is related to an email, except for the email itself. If you want to think of it like a physical letter, the meta-data is all the information regarding the letter, except the contents of the letter itself, like the sender's name and address, the receiver's address and name, and other publicly visible information regarding the letter. Meta-data includes, the time the message was sent, who it was sent to and from, the date sent, location sent from. Facebook can get information on who you talk to the most on WhatsApp, who you talk to the least, who your friends are on WhatsApp, and other information regarding your use of the App except for the actual messages, theoretically. They can then use that information they get to link it to your Facebook account if you have one, and other online profiles they have on you, and be able to target you with more advertisements.\n\nThe reason I keep saying theoretically Facebook can't read your messages is because the encryption that Facebook utilizes in WhatsApp is not verifiable because it is closed source. Even if they encrypted everything perfectly, and showed that, they could still have some questionable code in the actual application that essentially would allow Facebook to pull encrypted content as soon as you opened it when they wanted to.\n\nThis is simply a speculation by people concerned about online privacy, but it is a legitimate one since there is no way of disproving it without having some form of audit on Facebook's code, which can never really be trusted unless it is open source so ANYONE can audit it, which will never happen. So essentially you are trusting Facebook to have end to end encryption. This is one of the reasons that people concerned with privacy choose open source applications as much as possible, since anyone can audit the code, including themselves. \n\nI hope that explains it.",
"How it works: you randomly generate a private-public key pair. The public key can encrypt a message which can only be decrypted by the private key. When you want to chat with someone, you send them your public key, they can then use it to encrypt their message, send it to whatsapp, which then forwards you the encrypted message that then gets decrypted with your private key. \n\nWhatsapp cannot see the contents of your encrypted messages as they do not have your private key. However, they know who you're talking to, the approximate length of your message, and other metadata like that in order to be able to forward you the message. ",
"The data they want to use for targeted advertising is mainly your contacts. People who are in each other's contact lists are more likely to have similar interests.",
"Only the actual chat contents are encrypted in transition. So if Person A is chatting with Person B, then texts that they send each other are encrypted. But Facebook can still use the fact that A is talking with B, how many times and when they talk, where they are located, whether they are friends on facebook, etc. It's basically a way to show Facebook Ads inside Whatsapp. "
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k51iq | the president, what he can and can't do, and what makes him different from prime ministers and such? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k51iq/eli5_the_president_what_he_can_and_cant_do_and/ | {
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"Most western democracies fall under one of three categories: The presidential system (e.g. the USA), the semi-presidential system (e.g. France) and the paliamentary system (e.g. Germany). These terms may seem confusing, as all three countries have a parliament and a president. But the difference is as follows:\n\nIn a **presidential system**, there is a strict separation between the government (aka *the executive*) and parliament (aka *the legislative*). The leader of the government is elected directly by the people, functions also as head of state and stays in office until the end of his term, unless he breaks any laws. He mustn't be a member of parliament, and he can't introduce a bill into parliament. On the other hand, he can veto bills.\n\n In a **parliamentary system**, there is some mixing between government and parliament. The leader of government (called prime minister or chancelor) is elected by parliament, he isn't the head of state and parliament can force him to resign if the members lose their trust in the government. He can be a member of parliament (in some countries he must be) and the government can introduce bills, but the leader of the government can't veto bills.\n\nIn a **semi-presidential system** you will find elements of the other two systems, with great variations between different countries.\n\n**tl; dr:** In one way, the American president is more powerful than a German chancelor or a British prime minister, because he doesn't depend on parliament to stay in office. In another way, he is less powerful, because he can only veto bills but not actively introduce them into parliament.",
"Most western democracies fall under one of three categories: The presidential system (e.g. the USA), the semi-presidential system (e.g. France) and the paliamentary system (e.g. Germany). These terms may seem confusing, as all three countries have a parliament and a president. But the difference is as follows:\n\nIn a **presidential system**, there is a strict separation between the government (aka *the executive*) and parliament (aka *the legislative*). The leader of the government is elected directly by the people, functions also as head of state and stays in office until the end of his term, unless he breaks any laws. He mustn't be a member of parliament, and he can't introduce a bill into parliament. On the other hand, he can veto bills.\n\n In a **parliamentary system**, there is some mixing between government and parliament. The leader of government (called prime minister or chancelor) is elected by parliament, he isn't the head of state and parliament can force him to resign if the members lose their trust in the government. He can be a member of parliament (in some countries he must be) and the government can introduce bills, but the leader of the government can't veto bills.\n\nIn a **semi-presidential system** you will find elements of the other two systems, with great variations between different countries.\n\n**tl; dr:** In one way, the American president is more powerful than a German chancelor or a British prime minister, because he doesn't depend on parliament to stay in office. In another way, he is less powerful, because he can only veto bills but not actively introduce them into parliament."
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3pmie3 | what is the lorentz contraction? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pmie3/eli5_what_is_the_lorentz_contraction/ | {
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"Imagine a car moving away from you. The time it takes for the light reflected off the front of the car to reach you, and the time it takes for the light reflected off the rear of the car to reach you, are for all intents and purposes the same when considering the speed of the car. You can then measure the car's apparent length knowing that the front and the rear hadn't moved in respect to each other when the light from each arrived at your position. In actuality it had, but given the relatively slow speed of the car it's not really measurable and certainly not perceivable.\n\nLet's crank up the car's velocity to 15% of the speed of light. Measuring the car's length based on viewing the front and the rear should give you the same answer as before, right? But in the difference in the time the light took to travel to you from the front, and from the rear, the car has moved measurably. This means that just by looking at a car travelling at 15% the speed of light, it appears shorter because the car moved in the time difference between seeing the front and seeing the rear of the car. In this case, 1% shorter for a speed of 15% the speed of light."
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89lm42 | is every square inch of land in america owned by someone or some entity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89lm42/eli5_is_every_square_inch_of_land_in_america/ | {
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"All land in the US is technically owned by someone or by the federal or a state government. If there were any \"unclaimed\" land, it would (and did and does) default to state government ownership."
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42vmij | each decade of the 20th century had a distinct character ie the 60s and hippies, the 80s and hairspray... what about the 19th century? was each decade defined by a certain style/music? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42vmij/eli5_each_decade_of_the_20th_century_had_a/ | {
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"Back in the day, cultural trends would move more slowly. We didn't have TV, Radio, cars & airplanes to spread pop culture & then replace it with the next big thing.\n\nThere were definitely trends & fashion but it didn't come out of nowhere & replace the existing thing overnight."
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3gca5v | why do high income and developed countries place such high taxes on their population compared to poor and undeveloped countries? | If you take a look at the wiki articles on country rankings by tax rates you will see that generally speaking, rich and developed countries have a high tax burden on their population compared to poor and undeveloped countries. The tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is high in developed countries, so are the individual income tax and VATs.
By tax burden I mean, the net tax a citizen pays---including VAT/Sales Tax, Income Tax, Corporate tax and everything else taken into account. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gca5v/eli5_why_do_high_income_and_developed_countries/ | {
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"Rich people can afford to pay high taxes while still having enough left over to pay for food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities.\n\nAnd rich countries tend to provide costly government services like nice transportation systems, clean water supply, sanitary waste disposal, police and fire protection, and a professionally run military -- so the government needs quite a bit of tax money.",
"Developed countries have things to offer people to encourage them to stay in the country and pay taxes. An educated workforce, quality healthcare (usually free), a strong transport network, a justice system that isn't openly corrupt.\n\nDeveloping countries can't attract tax revenues by offering things in return, so they have to keep taxes low. That in itself becomes a reason for rich people to come to the country. 5% of $10m is a lot more than 70% of $20,000.",
"Just to add to some of the other answers, remember that collecting taxes (especially income taxes) is hard work. It requires a decent legal system, competent officials, trust in government, good record keeping, etc . . . More developed countries tend to have better developed governments, and thus have more of a capacity to levy and collect taxes."
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cp5cbp | why do animals and other mammals follow the same body structure? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cp5cbp/eli5_why_do_animals_and_other_mammals_follow_the/ | {
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"Because they are all related. Bilateral symmetry, the basic body plan of animals, was established long ago and all animals are descended from that common ancestor.",
"There's a few things to dissect here.\n\n1. Mammals are a Class (high level category) of animals.\n\n2. Mammals in particular, and any animal under different classes (like a Salamander, an Amphibian) share common evolutionary ancestors and as such, are likely to have certain base traits in common. There's no reason for a species to change unless external, evolutionary pressure makes it advantageous to change. As for example, there's been no massive evolutionary pressure to get rid of sweat glands, mammals all share these as their common evolutionary ancestors had these. Although they're not universally ACTIVE in all mammals.\n\n3. Additionally, certain features are just useful across different classes on account of physics and the enviornment. Almost all land-based animals have legs, because there's only so many ways to locomote on land."
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817d11 | if you burn more calories than you take in, how do you manage to remain alive? | Wisdom states, to lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you take in to lose weight. Logic leads me to understand that if you burn what you take in, you remain at the same weight. But, if you're doing either of those, how do you manage to remain functioning?
It seems you need energy derived from food. If you burn more than take in, you'd run out of energy, or, at the very least, not have enough to get you through the day.
Akin to a car, the car can only go as fa as the gasoline you put in it allows you to go. Any more than that, you need more fuel. I liken a human body to the car; run out of fuel, you stop going.
Please, ELI5 as I've been unsuccessful in wrapping my brain around this. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/817d11/eli5_if_you_burn_more_calories_than_you_take_in/ | {
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"Because the car still has gas in the tank. That's what fat is; it's the amount of gas you still have in your tank.\n\nAnd yes, if you continually are at a caloric deficiency indefinitely (which would require you to constantly adjust it down because as you lost muscle/weight your base consumption levels would drop some) then eventually you would suffer from starvation and die. Generally most people's baseline will adjust downward enough to balance out or they will slightly increase their calorie consumption to match their use before that point though.",
" > It seems you need energy derived from food. If you burn more than take in, you'd run out of energy, or, at the very least, not have enough to get you through the day.\n\nExcess food energy the body takes in can be stored as fat. This fat in turn can be burned to satisfy any minor deficit in calorie intake. That is what is the aim of losing weight, the burning of the fat for energy.",
"To go with your car analogy, think of the way plug-in hybrids work. You plug it in and it charges the battery. As you drive, it uses the energy stored in that battery. But if the battery drains, it switches to the gas fuel stored in reserve. Once you plug it back in, it switches back to battery power. If you're running low on both kinds of energy, you can search for ways to reduce energy consumption, like driving slower or turning down the heater. If you run out of both electricity and gas, the car dies. \n\nSame with the body. The food you eat is like charging your battery, and for the most part, that energy gets used first. If you run out of that energy, the body switches to your reserve energy stores (fat). If you keep burning those energy stores, eventually your body will find ways to reduce energy consumption, such as reducing muscle mass. And eventually, if you don't fuel up, you die. "
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2xwjug | why is black truffle so prized in the culinary industry? | Was in France last week and went out to a fancy dinner. Are waiter wouldn't stop talking about how lucky we are to be having black truffles and how it was the last week of the season. Imo it just seemed like a fancy mushroom. Why are they so prized? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xwjug/eli5_why_is_black_truffle_so_prized_in_the/ | {
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"It all boils down to their rarity. Truffles are mycorrhizal this which means they will only fruit if grown in conjunction with certain types of trees. The mycelium of the mushroom (the vegetative body) forms a net and grows in between the cells of the root hairs which allows nutrient moves between the mushroom and the tree. Only when the mycelium is mature enough and the conditions are correct will it produce a fruiting body (truffle).\n\nTruffles are very specific to the climate and soil type in which they grow and because their life cycle and growth habits are complex it takes them a long time to get from spore to fruit (truffle).\n Also they are difficult to find since the fruit of the mushroom is completely hypogeous (grows underground). Dogs are used to find them but they take a long time to train and are therefore also very expensive. Pigs were once used but the scent truffles give off is close to pig pheromone and pigs many times end up eating them.\n\nFinally something could be said about their complex unattainable flavor, I have never thought they were that great but maybe I'm just a philistine. "
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94kv8s | difference between midi and mp3 file | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/94kv8s/eli5_difference_between_midi_and_mp3_file/ | {
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"A MIDI file is “instructions” for how a song should be played, like sheet music but with more options. An mp3 is a compressed (smaller file size by sacrificing some fidelity) version of an actual recording of a song."
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3vifjv | why does holding your nose help stifle your vomit impulse? | We've all seen it on TV.
We've all seen it in movies.
Hell, we have all done it at one point or another.
So why does holding your nose help stifle your vomit response? Your nose has little to nothing to do with your gag reflex right? Why does it seem to help you make it to the bathroom on time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vifjv/eli5_why_does_holding_your_nose_help_stifle_your/ | {
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"Actually, allthough the nose is not directly connected to the muscles or gag reflex itself, the brain is very much involved in vomiting. So by holding your nose, you are blocking smells/neural signals that might trigger/help the urge to vomit.\n\nSometimes you vomit because of internal issues (disease or something you ate), but a lot of the time people vomit or trigger their gag reflex by smells, tastes or something visual - meaning the brain is triggering it.\n\nELI5: it's like muting a scary movie, or covering your eyes so you don't see the scary face. Still scary, but not as scary as looking directly at it."
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2bq6gy | the whole "corporations are people" thing and why people hate it so much. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bq6gy/eli5_the_whole_corporations_are_people_thing_and/ | {
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"It mostly comes from a place of ignorance where people have latched on to a catchphrase. 'Corporate Personhood' is neither a new nor novel legal concept and is necessary for a variety of reasons. ",
"To fully understand this issue, we have to go back a few hundred years, before the idea of a corporation was invented. Prior to the industrial revolution, if you owned a business, you were personally liable for any debts that your business accrued. So, for example, if a piece of brick fell off your business' building and injured someone, that person could take you to court, and recover damages. If your business didn't have enough money to cover the damages, then the court could actually take the money from your personal holdings, e.g. force you to sell your property to pay for the damages.\n\nAs time went on, and businesses reached larger scales with many different shareholder-owners, it became impractical to try to go after the personal holdings of the owners themselves. So, the state came up with the solution of the corporation, which is a legal shield, that prevents the courts from going after the personal holdings of shareholders, and instead considers the \"corporation\" liable for the debt; this also had the side-effect of encouraging investment in business, since people no longer had to fear that the rest of their personal wealth was in jeopardy when they made an investment. \n\nSo corporations came into existence with this legal shield, but there was a problem. Under common law (which is the legal tradition of the US), only a \"person\" was allowed to sue or be sued. This meant that the courts would have to recognize the \"personhood\" status of corporations, or else people wouldn't be able to sue corporations. So, the courts came up with a [legal fiction](_URL_0_) called \"corporate personhood,\" the result of which was that a corporation can be brought to suit (and also that they can bring suits). The courts still do distinguish between a \"natural person\"(a flesh and blood human) and a \"legal person\" (a corporation).\n\nAs for why people hate the \"corporations are people thing\": for the same reason people detest anything about a corporation - corporations are the \"Big Bully\" just trying to keep the little guy down, etc. etc.\n\n**TL;DR** - corporate personhood comes from a quirk of the common law legal system, whereby only a \"person\" could appear in court.",
"/u/tinsmith63 is not correct in saying the corporation-as-person began in US/common law. The corporation, or more broadly, the non-human person, has ancient roots. For example, there are records of corporate persons in Roman law. A public entity, such as a \"tribe,\" is also a non-human person.\n\nMost people think person means human, but this not the legal use of the term. A person is simply an entity that can own property and can have legal standing. A corporation is a person, but not a human. A slave is a human, but not a person. Since people don't understand this, they think that treating corporations as persons has lead to the grant of excessive rights to corporations (and other non-human persons). But none of the rights at issue must follow from the fact that corporations are persons. We could, for example, say that the right to political speech or religion are exclusively human rights. Corporations would still be persons, and there would be no issue. \n\nThe media uses this phrasing because it upsets people. If the media said that the law treats corporations as \"entities\" it wouldn't work people up as well. Better to make them think courts are treating corporations as if they are humans - this is so ridiculous that, if you say it, people will surely read the article.",
"if a company has all the rights of a person than it should have all responsibilities and consequences but you cant throw a whole company in prison",
"Two things going on here:\n\n1) \"Corporations are people, my friend\" comes from an exchange between Romney and a critic. The critic was (clumsily) asking why we don't shift more taxes onto corporations, and Romney was (also clumsily) replying that any tax on a corporation is going to hit a person somehow -- either the owners, the customers, or workers. Economists agree with Romney on the substance.\n\n2) The quote has been emblematic of a general feeling that corporations are too powerful and influential in the political process, regardless of the merit of Romney's point.\n\nEdit: Here's [Paul Krugman's](_URL_0_) reaction at the time, making a similar point.",
"Everyone is arguing the question very literally, but I think they're misunderstanding what is meant by \"corporations are people.\"\n\nYes corporations happen to be classified as a \"person\" legally but I don't think that's what people who are defending corporations mean, why would how an entity is classified legally matter when defending corporations in general?\n\nWhat they really mean is that corporations are made up of people, the people working there who's livelihood depends on the corporation, remember a corporation is defined as a large group of people working in unity. So basically when people want to attack corporations the defense is that the corporations are not some machine, they are just a collection of people.\n\nThe legal aside is interesting, but not usually what is really meant.",
"To answer your direct question(without the history lesson)- people hate it because corporations get all of the benefits of personhood without any of the responsibility. For instance: if a person commits a crime, they can be jailed or killed- corporations no such thing. There are other examples but this is the reason for the hate. ",
"A note on the hate - a lot of people dislike the legal shield aspect because it makes it seem like no real human beings take any blame for actions a corporation does. Basically, \"the corporation\" gets punished and the humans behind the action avoid all responsibility. That's the perception of it at least."
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30rpvh | if calories are just a unit of energy then how can things like redbull have 0 calories but still give you energy? | I feel like there's some crucial bit of understanding that I'm missing here. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30rpvh/eli5_if_calories_are_just_a_unit_of_energy_then/ | {
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"Energy is an odd word when it comes to food. You derive energy only from foods containing calories. However, there are substances that for various reasons give you the perception of being energetic, or awake, or whatever. Consider that a pound of fat has approximately 3,500 calories worth of energy within it to use. That's enough to run for several hours. What things like Red Bull do is introduce chemicals into you that block receptors that tell you that you are tired. There are also other chemicals with no value, or little value, or that aren't really understood very well. Generally, it's the Caffeine and Guarana that are assisting in making you feel less tired. \n\nThe rest is likely psychology, and later on psychological addiction. You'd be better served drinking a cup of coffee and avoiding the rest. Better safe than sorry.",
"There are elements at play, like caffeine, that stimulate your nervous system which give you the perceived energy you speak of. Energy is used loosely for this stimulant as well as a term used for foods that have energy."
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f8nzv7 | photon reflection off a mirror. | Does the exact same photon of light bounce back or is it absorbed and a new one with the same properties emitted? how does it remember its path? And if it bounces back, does its velocity comes to near zero for a small-time before being reflected back in a straight line at same angle. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f8nzv7/eli5_photon_reflection_off_a_mirror/ | {
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"The individual wavefunctions corresponding to the photon interacting with each particle in a perfect mirror are in superposition. They only constructively interfere along the path where the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection.",
"\"We normally think of photon scattering as absorbing the original photon and emitting a new one with a different momentum, so in your example of the mirror, the incoming photon interacts with the free electrons in the metal and is absorbed. The oscillations of the free electrons then emit a new photon headed out from the mirror. Unlike e.g. electrons, photon number isn't conserved and photons can be created and destroyed whenever they interact.\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\nKinda explains in layman's terms. From a Physics website, not my explanation.",
"Say that we have a laser at point A and a detector at point B. We aim the laser so that the light coming out of it bounces off a mirror and goes into the detector. The actual physics of what's going on at the point where the light bounces off the mirror is extremely complicated and depends on material properties and the frequency of light, etc. But in short, what *probably* will happen is that the individual photons are absorbed by electrons in atoms/molecules which then go into an excited state. The electron then wants to lose this energy to be in a more relaxed state, so it spits a photon out, typically with the same frequency at the absorbed photon. The direction that the photon is most probable to be emitted is going to be determined by specific properties of the atoms/molecules that make up the mirror and this absorbing/emitting process might happen multiple times. \n\nOkay, now for the fun question. How does it \"remember\" its path, and how does it know to reflect at the same angle it came in at? The short answer is that it doesn't. In fact, as we understand it, the photons (both incoming and outgoing) take *every possible path simultaneously.* Each path gets assigned a \"probability\" (really, it is an amplitude which you can think of as a kind of \"square root\" of a probability) based on the fundamental properties of nature and these either add together or subtract from each other. It just so happens that the paths very near the path of shortest distance (the one where the light bounces off the mirror at the same angle it came in) all add together, while paths far away from this subtract out. So you are left with a net effect of light traveling the shortest distance between the two points, never once having to know or remember its path."
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2ea85t | why does my brain resist exercise until i feel shitty for not exercising? why doesn't my brain crave exercise, knowing i'll feel better for it after? | I realise it's all about routine and perhaps I'll crave it once I get into more of a habit, but why do people's brains allow them to get out of shape and unhealthy to begin with?
Same for eating healthily, why do we crave shitty, fatty foods instead of fruit and veg?
You can say it, I'm just lazy! :P | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ea85t/eli5_why_does_my_brain_resist_exercise_until_i/ | {
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"Because for most of our existence we had to fight very, very hard to survive. That meant eating the food with the most calories because we didn't know when we'd be eating again, and not expending extra energy if we didn't need to.\n\nSo now that our lives are very different, we haven't changed our DNA. Exercise is not something we cared about 99.999% of our existence. Life was exercise. Hard exercise. ",
"It all has to do with how we form habits. Habits form when there is an action, and an immediate reward. Repeat the action and reward a few times to strengthen that connection: bam! Habit.\n\nOur brains are really bad at long-term rewards. Exercise makes us feel great *afterwards* (at least if we've been working out semi-regularly), and of course we will feel significantly better in the long run. But the parts of our brains associated with forming habits don't think that far ahead. It only sees the short term pain.\n\nYou can relatively easily train your brain to get around this though. Immediately after working out, treat yourself to some chocolate. Try to do it as soon as possible after working out so your brain makes the connection. And don't \"treat yourself\" to a smoothie or some bullshit like that. Make it a real reward; something that the more basic, habit forming parts of your brain will actually recognize as a reward. Like I said, chocolate works great, but if chocolate isn't your thing you can find something else to fit the bill.\n\nWhat you're trying to do is establish that action-reward relationship. Chocolate is a pretty basic reward, but if company or interaction with other people is what you crave, than consistently working out with other people can register in your brain as a reward.\n\nBreaking bad habits is similar. Identify the action and the reward (which might not always be immediately obvious - think critically about it) and work to decouple the reward from the action. This usually means finding a way to get the same reward through a different, hopefully healthier action."
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6x44m7 | when a person or corporation "pledges" a dollar amount to disaster relief, what exactly do they do with that amount of money (typically)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6x44m7/eli5_when_a_person_or_corporation_pledges_a/ | {
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"Often, they'll just give the amount to a big, general relief charity like the Red Cross or perhaps a government agency handling the purchase or relief goods. Or if they have a product that is useful, they may donate that amount of the product (say Huggies donating diapers).\n\nA pledge is just a public announcement of intention to make a donation, before the actual payment is made."
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1sbdvz | why do police who do horrible things in the media seem never to get punished? what's actually going on? | No text. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sbdvz/eli5_why_do_police_who_do_horrible_things_in_the/ | {
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"According to a recent post on reddit, what actually happens (in the US at least) is that they go on paid leave while two investigations (a criminal and then an administrative one) take place, only after which will any charges be brought against them.\n\nThis is additionally complicated by the fact that evidence gained during the administrative investigation cannot be used in court, but lying or refusing to answer a question is grounds for dismissal of the officer.\n\nWhat generally apparently happens is that by the time this process has taken place, the media no longer cares and has moved on to some other story.",
"If you're referring to the the paid leave that you hear about police being put on their is a reddit post that sums it up pretty well that is only the first part of the punishment process. Most media outlets don't follow up on the cases like that since nobody really cares about something that doesn't outrage them outright and most people don't get outraged by trial proceedings going according to plan.\n\nHere's the post\n_URL_0_\n\nThe gist of it is, if you don't like reading long texts; their paid leave is basically house arrests. It's paid because they haven't been proving \"guilty\" as it were. While their are on paid leave their are being investigated to see if they can be fired and/or jailed. \n\nSo they do get in trouble, news headlines just don't really mention it too much\n",
"Usually they do get punished, it's just that the media strives for bad news. No one is going to be talking about the cop who got paid leave and then lost his case and got removed from the force. The people however will always talk about the police officer just getting paid leave. \n\nAll it boils down to is cops are working a job much like other people are. Know that jerk from 4c that constantly steals office supplies and all he got was a slap on the wrist? Kind of the same concept. Plus I wont ever talk about the psychological affect of a cops job on his mentality. I'm not speaking about the whole power going to ones head, I'm talking about the paranoia and other mental health issues which can arise. INC downvotes, because I am not on the circlejerk of cop hating on reddit.",
"There's two different forces at work: the media, and the actual legal system.\n\nThe media splashes the accusation/charges in a big bold front page headline, but then publishes the results [either way] on the bottom of page 11. I think that nothing should be published until convictions are made, and that's open to debate.\n\nThe system itself protects the officers from false allegations. It could use some fine tuning, but it works. Here, I'd like to see convicted agents reimburse any wages earned during paid leave or administrative duties, followed by harsher sentencing. Also debatable."
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7pvxqx | how do scientists know that a rock is from space and not of earthly origin? | I was reading [this article about the Hypatia stone](_URL_0_) and was wondering how they know the origin is not earthly. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7pvxqx/eli5_how_do_scientists_know_that_a_rock_is_from/ | {
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"Not sure if related, but there are certain micro/atomic structures that are indicators of certain things.\n\nSimilar to when coal is subjected to incredibly high pressure, temperature and time it will form into a diamond, there's some structures common in minerals and rocks originating in space. A common one I know offhand is [Widmanstätten pattern](_URL_0_).",
"depends on what it's made of. [meteoric iron](_URL_0_) is unique because metal doesn't naturally make that kind of pattern on earth.\n\ncertain elements and compounds are reactive in earth conditions. metallic aluminum famously doesn't exist naturally on earth. if we found a hunk of it that wasn't man made, we'd know it wasn't on earth however many thousands/millions of years ago, or it would have eroded away.\n\nthis also applies to certain isotopes. if something radioactive is too young, it can't be from earth. earth has a well known age and all the crap that was here has been aging all this time. \n\nthere are also more obvious signs. something from space smacking into earth has an impact. if a meteor slams into a desert, you're going to find a lot of natural glass around the impact site. entire forests have been obliterated by meteors. "
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3m9qak | where will the potentially $18 billion volkswagen fines go? | Who gets the money?
What will it be used for? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m9qak/eli5where_will_the_potentially_18_billion/ | {
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"Governments. It is theoretically to go towards the costs of similar, future enforcement actions. ",
"To the government of course. .because you know. . They are the ones impacted the most by it. ..\n\nIt is kinda funny. . \"Fine em to protect the consumers\" when it is going to be the consumers that pay the fines in the long run. "
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4n2rc1 | how does ice actually burn the skin? | What is the actual definition of *burning* when it comes to damaged tissue? Is it when your sensory receptors in your skin go ape shit do to coming in contact with extreme temperatures? Or the feeling simply be the burning sensation?
I'm burnt out just asking myself.
Ha... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4n2rc1/eli5_how_does_ice_actually_burn_the_skin/ | {
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"I'm not a doctor, but: \n\nTo my knowledge, a burn is when heat (or a chemical) causes tissue damage by denaturing proteins. Think of what happens to an egg when you cook it. The change you see is due to proteins unfolding or \"denaturing.\"\n\nSimilarly, heat and chemicals can damage our tissues by denaturing proteins.\n\nThe \"burning\" sensation is completely different. Sometimes it happens because we are literally being burned, but other things can cause it as well (bug bites, hot peppers, scrapes, etc.). It's just your nerves signalling your brain that there's some sort of injury, even if there isn't.\n\nReal damage from ice (frost bite) is due to the water in our cells freezing and expanding. These ice crystals cause cells to rupture.\n\nWhat I'm not sure of is if cold temperatures (say cold enough to hurt but not freeze) are actually damaging the tissue. Cold temperatures can mess with cell metabolism and restrict blood flow but that's not \"burning.\""
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2fktnz | what exactly is happening when you hold your nose and blow to help relieve your ears during pressure changes in an airplane? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fktnz/eli5_what_exactly_is_happening_when_you_hold_your/ | {
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"Your middle ear is connected to the nasal cavity by a [eustachian tube](_URL_0_) and as the animated gif shows, you make the tympanic membrane go back to normal when you hold your nose and force air up the tube.",
"Thats called Valsalva maneuver:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nWhen I used to fly at the airlines, I used it all the time."
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1oz9f8 | saudi arabia says it's rejection of a unsc seat is a "message for the us, not the un." how does this make sense? | It seems to me like accepting a Security Council seat would give Saudi Arabia more influence and ability to pressure the US to adopt a stance on Syria closer to their own. How does denying this opportunity present a "message to the US"? It seems like shooting themselves in the foot more than anything, but I feel like I'm missing some key information. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oz9f8/eli5_saudi_arabia_says_its_rejection_of_a_unsc/ | {
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"If Saudi Arabia accepts the UNSC seat, then they do have more power, but they also give up some power because they are now part of this body and have to play by some new rules.\n\nHaving given it up, they are telling the United States (and the world) that they are going to go their own route and do whatever they want. This could include starting their nuclear program to counter Iran's nuclear program. The United States said they would protect Saudi interests and since they didn't in Syria, how can Saudi Arabia count on the United States to protect them from a nuclear Iran?\n\n"
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1ewrqu | the difference between pop and imap email protocol | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ewrqu/eli5the_difference_between_pop_and_imap_email/ | {
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"The biggest difference is that POP simply allows you to view or retrieve messages stored in a flat list on the server. You can order them by date, but that's about it. POP is useful if you want to organize and manage email messages entirely on the client side - so, you download messages from the server, then delete them off the server, then you can create folders or categories or whatever to organize your messages on the client (i.e. on your computer). The biggest advantage to POP is that you don't need to be connected to the server to read your saved emails. The biggest drawback is that if you are on someone else's computer, or a computer in a public library or something, you have no access to the saved messages on your computer at home.\n\nIMAP allows you to organize messages by folder right on the server. So, an IMAP capable client can show you your messages remotely, very little information is actually stored on the client side. The biggest advantage of IMAP is that you can access all your saved and archived messages from any computer capable of contacting the server. The biggest drawback of IMAP is that you need to have a connection to the server to read your saved emails.\n"
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meo3o | how a midi guitar works | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/meo3o/eli5_how_a_midi_guitar_works/ | {
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"The guitar is just a controller, like for an xbox or playstation.\n\nLet's take a simple case, where the strings are only used to tell the guitar if they were hit or not. In this case, the guitar checks to see which string is hit, and the highest fret that is being held down on that string. It codifies this somehow, and sends it off to whatever program that is currently listening to this guitar. This program has a table set up that tells it what sound to play for every possible response the controller could give. Usually, the sounds are set up like a regular guitar, where each string starts with a guitar-like open note sound, and every fret raises that same sound up a half step. Theoretically though you could make the guitar make any sounds you want, because the guitar doesn't actually make the sounds, it just tells the computer what fret and string have been hit. when multiple strings are hit at the same time, they are sent one at a time to the computer so fast that you cannot register the time delay with which they are played. They are played individually of each other, and the sound card in your computer or whatever is driving the guitar will overlay the sounds to make it sound like a chord.\n\nIn a guitar which takes string tension or other factors into account, more complex responses from the controller are required, probably with some form of 'force' variable that goes from 0 to 127 or 0 to 255. How this is handled I'm not sure, but once it gets to the program, it will have a bigger table based on the string, the fret, and the amount of force applied, or possibly (but not probably) an algorithm to run on the base note to make it sound louder and twangier\n\nEDIT: the wiki page for further reading: _URL_0_",
"The guitar is just a controller, like for an xbox or playstation.\n\nLet's take a simple case, where the strings are only used to tell the guitar if they were hit or not. In this case, the guitar checks to see which string is hit, and the highest fret that is being held down on that string. It codifies this somehow, and sends it off to whatever program that is currently listening to this guitar. This program has a table set up that tells it what sound to play for every possible response the controller could give. Usually, the sounds are set up like a regular guitar, where each string starts with a guitar-like open note sound, and every fret raises that same sound up a half step. Theoretically though you could make the guitar make any sounds you want, because the guitar doesn't actually make the sounds, it just tells the computer what fret and string have been hit. when multiple strings are hit at the same time, they are sent one at a time to the computer so fast that you cannot register the time delay with which they are played. They are played individually of each other, and the sound card in your computer or whatever is driving the guitar will overlay the sounds to make it sound like a chord.\n\nIn a guitar which takes string tension or other factors into account, more complex responses from the controller are required, probably with some form of 'force' variable that goes from 0 to 127 or 0 to 255. How this is handled I'm not sure, but once it gets to the program, it will have a bigger table based on the string, the fret, and the amount of force applied, or possibly (but not probably) an algorithm to run on the base note to make it sound louder and twangier\n\nEDIT: the wiki page for further reading: _URL_0_"
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akge2b | why do scientists research commonly known stuff? | Just read about how research shows that stretching slightly reduces muscle soreness (_URL_0_).
It's been known in society for a long time before this that stretching reduces soreness, so who is paying scientists to research it and other things similar? What's the benefit to those paying? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/akge2b/eli5_why_do_scientists_research_commonly_known/ | {
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"It's worth finding out why and how something works, because once you know the mechanism behind it, you can use it more effectively, refine it so it works even better, and apply the same techniques to other purposes.\n\nWe've long known, for example, that tea of beech bark soothes pain and fever. Figuring out the active components in the bark has given us convenient and highly effective tablets of aspirin.",
"Actually if you read the article it does next to nothing. It reduces soreness by between half a point and one point on a 100 point scale. So if you normally get soreness of 41/100 after going for a run, you could stretch and change that to 40.5, or maybe to 40. So essentially the time spent stretching is not worth the reward. You wouldn't notice the difference in those scores. \n\nYour comment is exactly why we need to research commonly held beliefs, they may seem obvious but are often wrong.\n\nIn addition, it's impossible to give someone placebo stretches in a research study, so there's a very high likelihood placebo accounts for that 0.5 to 1 point change that the article is reporting. ",
"I think one of the more important points of science is never to assume anything. Everything has to be proven with evidence. So it wouldn't matter how common the knowledge is, it still has to be proven using the scientific method to be used in science. Also, in doing this they will find a LOT more information than just the common knowledge it's self. They'll have an exact quantified basis for that knowledge, as well as discover exactly WHY and exactly HOW it's the case not just the common knowledge THAT it's the case.",
"You've just beautifully illustrated why scientists research commonly \"known\" stuff: just because something is commonly thought to be true because it sounds intuitive or it's \"common knowledge\" doesn't necessarily mean that it's correct. And in this case, it turns out that it isn't correct:\n\n > The evidence from randomised studies suggests that muscle stretching, whether conducted before, after, or before and after exercise, does not produce clinically important reductions in delayed‐onset muscle soreness in healthy adults.\n\n",
"Because scientific testing can point to WHY something is true, or uncover little-known wrinkles. It also separates placebo effect (something feels different because you expect it to) from actual effect. \n\nAlso, common \"knowledge\" often comes from old folk tales, religion, logical fallacies, and the like. If you heard them just a few times, you'd laugh them off. It's only because they've become ingrained in popular imagination that you believe them.\n",
"You should check out the structure of scientific revolutions by Thomas Kuhn if you're interested in why we investigate common knowledge. Academia can get stuck in paradigms based on axioms that we regard as self-evident, but may not be the most accurate representation of the world. At one point it was common knowledge that the sun was the center of the universe until scientific progress proved otherwise and the paradigm shifted. Another example would be euclidean geometry presented in the elements, which was used as common knowledge for over a millennia until riemann came along with his geometry that altered the axioms set forth by Euclid so that they better represented the world. ",
"Also just to add to the good points others have already made, researching/doing studies on things that are \"known\" is an important part of the scientific method. One study saying stretching does or does not reduce soreness does not really carry much weight BUT a hundred studies carried out by different researchers following correct methods all showing similar statistically significant results would be a much greater indicator of what the facts are. Reproducibility of results is key. 🤓",
"In addition to what everyone else is saying, well known/established studies are still replicated to ensure that they’re actually true and not due to sketchy stats etc. \n\nSource: the lab I work in does replication studies for that exact reason. ",
"Lots of common knowledge (*especially* about the human body) is wrong and/or baseless\n\nLike the whole 8 cups of water a day thing ",
"The fact that an apple falls from a tree naturally and it hits the ground has been well known to humanity for hundreds of thousands of years. It took someone asking why an object falls towards the ground to enable a dramatically more detailed understanding of our universe. \n\nEveryone has known forever that light helps us see things. It took someone asking “but what is light, actually?” to give us basically all the technology we have today. \n\nIt’s about why. And as others have pointed out, verifying our common sense which is often wrong. ",
"They research \"commonly known\" stuff to prove or find out more. Also who stretches to reduce soreness? That's not why you should be stretching.",
"There are lots of correct answers here, OP, but I want to point out an interesting coincidence I think no one has that is very relevant to your question that article is from the **Cochrane Library**, the library of an organisation called Cochrane dedicated to summarising evidence about medical questions. If you want to compare different interventions (like stretching), the best kind of test you can do is something called a **randomised controlled trial**. This is where you get two (or more) groups, you compare two different interventions (sometimes a placebo with one treatment or sometimes two real treatments) and you give each treatment to the two groups. What's so great about this is one groups is the *control* group so you're not just guessing what amount of the outcomes was due to other factors like genetics and both groups are *randomised* so you're not just getting flukes from one group being younger or something.\n\n A few short decades ago, it wasn't the norm to test treatments like this. It was a mix of professional experience with inferences from laboratory science to come to conclusions that were **commonly known** but sometimes **wrong**. One such example was that prescribing steroids after a car crash was thought to help because it reduced brain swelling. But when they ran a trial they found it was killing people, so researching stuff that as commonly known discovered new knowledge that contradicted the old.\n\nSurprisingly, this kind of thinking is just recently and against much resistance percolating into fields like policy, education, philanthropy, and so on. If you want to know more about evidence in medicine, I suggest reading the work of Dr. Ben Goldacre. If you want to see how this is being applied to charities, you should read up on [Effective Altruism](_URL_0_).",
"I heard a joke that might shed some light on trusting common knowledge. \n\nA woman was teaching her daughter to cook a ham and the first thing she did was cut off both ends. Her daughter asked why and she said she didn’t know, that’s just how her mother taught her. So she asked her mother, who said the same thing. So she asked her grandmother. Her grandmother said her roasting pan was too small for a whole ham so she had to cut the ends off so it would fit. \n\nCommon knowledge is not always right or fully understood. Researchers want to understand things fully. They want to know the mechanisms and the limits. In the case of stretching, it used to be the case that coaches would recommend hyper extension stretches. Some high school and college athletes ended up needing joint replacements later in life because of it.\n\nAs for who pays for it and where the value is, that’s a different question. This sort of research is usually done in university. Most of the hands on work is done by graduate students and undergraduates. Whatever the results or the practical applications may be, the act of doing the research in a rigorous and meticulous way serves as a great training tool for the students. Those students may not go on to study this topic for the rest of their lives, but the skills of scientific inquiry can be applied to lots of things. Often when professors are writing grant applications one of the questions is about training of students. The granting agency wants to know how many students of different types will be impacted by the grant. ",
"The point of research and science is to take something we take for granted and do everything we can to prove it wrong.\n\nIf we fail at proving it wrong, it's likely true. It's not fact that it's true, but it's very likely is.\n\nThis will raise a few questions while we do this: Why is it true?\n\nCue further research ad infinitum.\n\nAs Albert Einstein said:\n\"As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.\"\n\nThe more one studies something, the more questions arise.\n\n\nAnd speaking of Einstein, there's constant attempts to find caveats to the general theory of relativity. While we do know it kind of breaks down at a quantum scale already, we still do research at the cosmic scale, trying to find evidence that it's wrong so that we can make an improved theory.",
"Commonly known things aren't necessarily correct. Sometimes they may be correct but the mechanisms behind them aren't understood or haven't been evidenced sufficiently for scientific purposes.\n\nIt was once commonly known that witches caused diseases and crop failures, it wasn't even that long ago in evolutionary/anthropological terms, and people still use those same mechanisms of \"common sense\" for current problems. \n\nFor example, it's commonly known that vitamin supplements will benefit your health but the scientific evidence doesn't really support this, not unless you have a specific deficiency. \n\nAlso, what is \"common\" is subjective. A society that finds stretching offensive because it is seen a rude attempt by a person to touch the gods might assume that not stretching is good for you. That society would not question its own biases whereas scientific investigation would try to do so. \n\n"
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1msznm | since mars has no magnetic field, could we ever restore the atmosphere there? | More specifically curious as to whether or not mars could ever be made habitable for humans, or is that more like science fiction? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1msznm/eli5_since_mars_has_no_magnetic_field_could_we/ | {
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"The dissipation of an atmosphere is an incredibly long process. Mars still has an atmosphere, so its not like it would just vanish. The main issue would be the creation of enough greenhouse and other gasses to counteract the dissipation. "
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|
djdkkn | what exactly happens in the stomach when you bend over/lay over on your stomach right after eating? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/djdkkn/eli5_what_exactly_happens_in_the_stomach_when_you/ | {
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"What do you mean? What should happen?"
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b5pu6k | why is it that we use petrol as fuel when alcohol is both cheaper and easier to produce? | what cons does ethanol have compared to petrol? one thing i'm certain about is that ethanol is both cheaper and easier to produce. should have cons then. what's that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b5pu6k/eli5_why_is_it_that_we_use_petrol_as_fuel_when/ | {
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"There is much less energy per gallon in ethanol than gasoline. It's slightly cheaper, per gallon, and slightly more expensive, per mile.\n\nEthanol is **not** easy to produce. Most ethanol is produced by converting **food** into fuel. People need food to eat to keep them alive, it's highly expensive, in terms of lost opportunity. A corn field's worth of solar cells makes more miles of electric car driving than it makes miles of ethanol car driving.",
"* It isn't as energy-dense; 20 liters of petrol is about equal to 30 liters of ethanol. This means cars either can't travel as far on existing tanks, or would need bigger tanks (and thus need to lug around more heavy fuel, reducing fuel economy)\n* Ethanol is *hygroscopic*, meaning it absorbs water from the air. Water tends to be pretty bad for engines, so maintenance costs go up.\n* Ethanol damages aluminum, magnesium, and rubber. These are all used in engines. Engines can be built without these materials but they are more expensive and harder to maintain.\n* Ethanol can't ignite at low temperatures. For this reason, pure-ethanol fuel is not used on a commercial scale in most of the world, and is instead mixed with petrol in a 85/15 blend at maximum.\n* Ethanol is **not** cheaper or easier to produce - in fact, in most cases *producing ethanol uses more energy than the ethanol produces* meaning that it's wasteful to use. Once produces of ethanol fuel transition to renewable/non-polluting energy sources this will become less of a concern, but it is still more efficient not to use ethanol.\n* Ethanol at present tends to require large amounts of land and water to produce; whether this is a problem varies from place to place. As developments with ethanol sources (e.g. high-efficiency algae) progress, this may become less of an issue.",
"Another thing to note is that fossil fuels were (especially a few decades ago) **extremely abundant.** Technically they still are, since there are vast mats of subterranean organic compounds collected over tens of millions of years, be it coal or oil. Some just require a bit more ingenuity to reach now (deep sea oil rigs for example).\n\nBut it used to be the case that you could just drill a hole in the sandstone at say...Kuwait. And the natural pressure difference would pump it up for you. [The Burgan Oil Field was the size of 11,000 football fields.](_URL_0_) And contained about 75 billion barrels of oil. Completely accessible on land with no extremely complex equipment. And that's just one oil field.\n\nInsofar as selecting a readily available fuel source for your growing automobile industry in the 20th century...well petroleum is just perfect.\n",
"One thing is what's called \"energy density\" - basically when you burn a gram of an alchohol you get around 20-25 kilojoules of energy out of it, whereas if you burn a gram of gasoline or similar fuels you get 40-50 kilojoules of energy from it. so almost twice as much energy for the same amount, which means gasoline can be easier to ship long distances since you need less of it. also, a ot of the things that are used to make ethanol can be used for other purposes as well. a field full of plants for fuel ethanol production can also be used for food for humans, grazing area for cows sheep or goats etc. so there are questions about best use. with petrol it tends to be either used to make plastic or you burn it for energy.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBut tbh, the main reasons why things get used for fuel or not has to do with politics and history and so forth. petrol was used earlier due to happenstance and you generally have to switch a few things around to make old machinery work with a new fuel, which is extra steps. and there are a lot of companies and so forth that gain their wealth from the existing fuel process, so they are not eager to change and they have a lot of influence. so not all the reasons are strictly scientific. and ofc, this doesn't even go into questions of whether burning a carbon containing molecule is the best solution for any specific energy need in general. there are other options."
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3a1xo5 | how did people study the human body? | I understand the human anatomy can be studied by cutting open dead people, but how were we able to learn about, for example, how organs function, which would require people to be alive? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3a1xo5/eli5_how_did_people_study_the_human_body/ | {
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"The truth is that this is something that humanity was really, really bad at for a really long time and we had a lot of weird ideas about how things worked. Some people still believe weird stuff about the body to this day. It didn't help that people kept mixing in supernatural/spiritual theories about body parts. But overall, gross human dissection, dissecting sick people after they'd died and basic observations about living people all helped early civilisations to work out some of the basics.\n\nA lot of it was done by trial and error and observation. Some stuff was more obvious than others. We could tell that people's chests inflated when they breathed and that if people didn't breathe, they died, so we got an idea that it must be important for air to go into the lungs. We could see that there were all these tubes in the body which connected to the heart and were full of blood, and we knew that the heart was beating in people who were alive but not in people who were dead, so we got a rough idea that it was important for blood to be carried around the body and started to cotton on the idea of the circulatory system. It wasn't until the 13th century that someone made the connection that there must be something important in the air that got transferred around in the blood stream and figured that must happen in the lungs, where all the air was going.\n\nPeople could see through dissection that the brain was connected (via the spinal cord and nerves) to muscles and organs, so they worked out that the function of the brain was probably to control other parts of the body. They also were probably able to observe that people who'd been hit on the head might develop learning impairments and personality changes, so could conclude that the brain was important in these aspects.\n\nPeople could work out that kidneys were connected to the bladder and the bladder was connected to your urethra, so they figured out that kidneys must have something to do with urine and waste production.\n\nSame kind of story with the digestive system. It's fairly easy to see that food ends up in the stomach and the stomach is connected to the intestines and eventually feces comes out the anus. So it would be pretty easy to conclude that, since if you don't eat you die, the body must have a system for getting what you needed out of food and getting rid of the stuff from it that you didn't need. People could also see that bile (which ended up in the digestive system) came out of the gall bladder, which was connected to the liver, so they probably managed to at least figure out that bile was made in the liver and was important in digestion.\n\nOther stuff was more complicated. Reproductive biology was poorly understood but again, it would be possible to make at least a primitive connection by looking at how all the tubes connected up and at the fact that sex lead to babies and babies were grown in the uterus.\n\nOther stuff, like the thyroid, wasn't really properly understood until more modern times. People got goiters and surgeons would just remove the whole thyroid and someone eventually noticed that people without a thyroid showed certain symptoms (like cretinism) and realised that the thyroid must be producing something important. Then, as technology started to advance, that gave people something to go on for future studies into thyroid hormones.\n\nObviously, anatomy and dissection really only gave people a really rough and incomplete idea of what was going on and people still had a lot of weird misconceptions. It wasn't until we had labs and microscopes and modern science that we were able to figure out a lot of the details. "
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2lfgkr | why do people celebrate guy fawkes night? i mean, he was a terrorist. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lfgkr/eli5_why_do_people_celebrate_guy_fawkes_night_i/ | {
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"They celebrate the fact that he was stopped, not the fact that he acted.",
"Guy Fawkes night is celebrating that the dastardly terrorist was caught!\n\nThe V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask thing is celebrating the guy who stood up for their beliefs.\n\nIf someone is celebrating November 5th and wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, they're either being ironic, or are completely misinformed."
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2ni53j | does gravity decrease at a constant rate the farther away from the surface you get? | If I weigh x on earth's surface, and near zero at the International Space Station, where and how does that transition take place?
Does the atmosphere have anything to do with it?
Would I weigh more at the bottom of a mine than on the surface? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ni53j/eli5_does_gravity_decrease_at_a_constant_rate_the/ | {
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"This is a good question because it illustrates a very common misunderstanding about space travel. \n\nThe answer to your question is \"yes\" - gravity decreases at a very specific, steady rate the farther away you get from an object.\n\nBut here's the thing: The ISS is only 260ish miles away from Earth - the gravity up there is only slightly less than what you're feeling right now while sitting at your computer. \n\nSo wait... how is the space station not falling then? How are the astronauts able to float around and stuff? \n\nThe answer is awesome: The ISS *is* falling. In fact, it's been falling nonstop for the past 16 years.\n\nImagine you throw a baseball straight ahead of you. Because of gravity, the ball kinda curves downward until it hits the ground, right? The faster you throw the ball the wider the curve gets, and the longer it takes for it to hit the ground. \n\nSo what would happen if you threw the ball *so* hard that its curve matched the Earth's curve? And what if you threw the ball from a really high altitude where there was no air to slow it down? That ball would just keep falling around and around the planet forever without ever actually hitting the ground. \n\nThat whole \"falling around the planet\" concept is what we normally call *orbiting*. When an object has enough sideways speed relative to its parent body a cool equilibrium is reached: Gravity is still trying to pull the object downward but the object is moving sideways so fast that it kinda keep missing.\n\nThat's basically what's going on on the space station (and every other spacecraft in Earth orbit). The station and all the astronauts inside are just free falling, but they're moving sideways so darn fast that they'll never actually crash in to the ground."
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f5l43z | why do depressed people have a harder time getting things done? why are "normal" people so much better at getting things started than us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f5l43z/eli5_why_do_depressed_people_have_a_harder_time/ | {
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"Your brain is entirely based on chemical reactions. When you do something rewarding (even mildly, like getting a chore done) your brain releases dopamine, a reward chemical. It makes you feel good, it’s your brain training itself to be like “if we do this thing, we get cookie!”\n\nDepression, in part, reduces the release or effectiveness of these chemicals. It makes it so you can’t see a reward for anything in the future, and don’t get that happiness boost from doing anything, training your brain to not even try"
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eydwg6 | in order to determine traffic, how does google maps distinguish between phones being in cars on the street (actually traffic) and phones that are used by people in their homes right next to the road (no traffic)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eydwg6/eli5_in_order_to_determine_traffic_how_does/ | {
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"I’d think they’d have a window and if it didn’t move for X seconds then it’s a pretty good guess that it’s not in a car. \n\nBut for all we know they have some other profile/method to determine with great accuracy what we’re doing. \n\nI’d be interested in a more exactly answer. Good question!"
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5rn65n | why can't we cut our body fat directly? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rn65n/eli5_why_cant_we_cut_our_body_fat_directly/ | {
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"Fat is difficult for the body to process because it isn't water soluble, but stores energy very efficiently (compared to glucose, it stores about twice the energy per gram). It is stored in adipose tissue, whose purpose is to store fat and cushion/insulate organs. Because of those things, fat doesn't want to leave adipose tissue, and when it's forced to, it does so in small amounts to keep your blood from becoming lard. Fat is used for energy as a last resort, it's the least efficient aerobic process our cells use to make energy, and your body will start consuming your muscles before it starts consuming fat. This is why diet is so important to burning fat. If you keep taking more in, you can't burn it off, so it gets stored while your body burns off sugars and protein first. If you take too much of everything in, you end up storing some of everything as fat.\n\nEven if you work out, you're not likely to burn more than 2500-3000 calories per day, that should be your ceiling, if you're trying to lose weight, exercise isn't the thing that will do it best. You should definitely exercise, because it helps a bit and it's really, really good for you, but taking in fewer calories than you burn is the only way to lose weight, and unless you're a professional bodybuilder or some sort of elite athlete, you are only in control of about 30% of the calories you burn at most. Even highly active hunter-gatherer tribes in Africa burn about the same number of calories daily as you and I.\n\n",
" Liposuction is really for anybody who can undergo surgery (in general) with low or no risk. All liposuction is, is the vacuuming (general term) of fat out of the body, then the surgeon will normally cut and fold skin to make it look natural. Like a previous comment said, fat is just storage of energy (glucose in the form of glycogen, I believe). The easiest way to burn off fat is to increase the amount of energy needed to maintain your body by building muscle. Most diets have you decrease the amount of calorie intake in a day, but that does little to nothing for the long term except deprive your body of much needed nutrients (which may force your body to adapt by reducing the amount of those nutrients it needs, which is not a pleasant process). \n If you're trying to lose fat, you HAVE to exercise, there's no healthy way around it. You also have to eat. Eat protein to increase muscle production, eat fat (saturated fat, which is like animal fat, etc) to maintain hormone production, and DRINK WATER, ATLEAST ONE GALLON A DAY. Your body doesn't want to be fat, it just thinks it has store tons of extra energy (because you aren't eating right usually). \n And when I say exercise, I don't mean like 3-hours of bodybuilding everyday. 30-minutes of cardio (walking at first, then jogging when you're more comfortable) to increase energy consumption, lift weights to build muscle (which increases energy consumption). Look up good beginner workout for muscle building. Don't be afraid of going to the gym, no one is going to make fun of you, because you may not be benching your bodyweight, but atleast you're trying.\n If you have any questions, concerns, or want some more advice, feel free to slide into my DMs.",
"There are some good answers here that address your question if you're asking figuratively. But, specifically because you mention liposuction, it's possible you mean it literally - why can't we just cut the fat away? I'll try to answer that question.\n\nThe first problem is that every form of surgery has risks. We've gotten really good at reducing them, but we can't make them go away entirely. We're really good at anesthetic, but there's a chance of something going wrong when you're under. We're really good at sterilizing tools, but anytime you cut someone a lot, you're creating a chance for infection. Surgeons are trained to be very careful, but mistakes can happen, and nicking something could lead to a lot of complications. So if you can do something without surgery, doctors will generally recommend avoiding the surgery.\n\nThe second problem is that fat isn't a simple, self-contained unit. Consider an organ like a gallbladder, which is removed fairly often. It's connected to the rest of the body by fairly well-defined points. It's got a clear boundary; you can literally pick up the gallbladder, unless it's already ruptured (and those are the more dangerous surgeries). Fat, on the other hand, is spread throughout the body. Think of a marbled steak, with fat running through it - a lot of your body is like that. There are some deposits that are relatively pure fat, but fewer than you might think, and generally well-connected to the rest of the body.\n\nThe third problem is that you'd have to remove a *lot* of fat to have the effect you're going for. Again, let's consider common removal surgeries: gallbladder, appendix, kidney transplant. Those organs are small. We're talking no more than a few ounces. To have any meaningful effect on BMI, you'd have to cut out way more than that. We're talking 20 pounds, 50 pounds, 100 pounds. Why does the size matter? Because all that tissue had connections to your blood vessels, to the surrounding muscles, etc. which all get suddenly severed. Further, at the boundaries, you've got a bunch of dead cells or damaged cells - the cells that you cut through. It's essentially a massive internal wound. Your body can deal with smaller wounds - that's why we can heal after normal surgeries - but trauma on that scale would easily overwhelm your body's ability to cope."
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6w4df2 | as a kid i hated the taste of broccoli, but as an adult i love it, how does that work? | I remember almost spewing from the foul taste of broccoli as a child. I also remember the day when a friend made broccoli soup with blue cheese, I hated both, but the combination triggered something and after that I love both broccoli and blue cheese. It's like as if they have a completely different taste since then.
How can someone's perception of something change so much? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6w4df2/eli5as_a_kid_i_hated_the_taste_of_broccoli_but_as/ | {
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"Children have a lot more taste buds than adults and those are a lot more sensitive to bitter sensations. Which makes Broccoli pretty much their mortal enemy. \nOver the years the amount of tastebuds reduces as does their sensitivity. \n\nThat's why broccoli (and spinach) are a lot more enjoyable once you grow older."
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8hadfu | how do you fry ice cream. | I’ve always wondered how ice cream is fried. Someone please help! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hadfu/eli5_how_do_you_fry_ice_cream/ | {
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"You superchill the Cream first, coat it in a tempura batter and fry it at a very high temperature.\n\nThe outer tempura crust is what actually \"fries\" and it insullates the soft icecream inside a nice perfect crunchy shell. \n\nin theory at least...\n",
"In the experiences I remember as a kid ordering it in restaurants, they roll a scoop of vanilla ice cream in some corn flakes.",
"I don’t know if it’s the same for deep frying but a baked alaska is made by ice cream covered in meringue and baked in an oven."
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5ihdto | what exactly can workplace it staff see, besides my browsing history? | For example, can they see passwords I've entered for non-work websites? Can they view files saved on my hard drive? I really doubt that that anyone at my workplace *would* (they have better things to do and I'm not that interesting), but ever since I learned that browsing histories are saved, I've wondered what else they *could* see, if they were so inclined.
Assume a relatively large company, but if there are different answers for different sized companies (or companies with different policies) I'd be curious to know that too. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ihdto/eli5_what_exactly_can_workplace_it_staff_see/ | {
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"I work for a technology company and can tell you for a fact that other than browsing history, my company can see any document I type out, anything I save, anything I move over from a thumb drive, even webcam access. \n\nSource: My COO has loose lips when we go drinking.",
"Assume if you enter it on a keyboard, they can see it. I doubt a company would save entire video records of sessions, but a keylogger isn't too hard to install and store what it records. Whether or not they would actually do that though is another story, and one I wouldn't be able to answer. ",
"I once asked this question of my company's IT director. We were in the process of a federal investigation at the time that also involved a patent infringement lawsuit. He just smiled and said, \"Not to worry, no one is looking at your computer. You don't know anything worth stealing or selling.\" I didn't know whether to be insulted or happy that I wouldn't be getting a subpoena.\n ",
"This depends from company to company, but you should assume that if it is a corporate controlled asset you are using that they can see literally everything, including you if you have a webcam.",
"ELI5 answer: Depending on the company, yes to all of those.\n\nMore in-depth answer:\nObviously, most websites where you enter a password are SSL encrypted, so the data being transferred can't be seen. However, modern firewalls (they call them next-gen) have the ability to automatically do man-in-the middle decryption by using a different certificate. Normally this doesn't work, because your computer checks the certificate and sees that it isn't trusted. But since your IT department set up your computer, they told it to trust the firewall's certificate. They're not likely to be saving your passwords, but they are likely keeping an eye out for corporate data, credit card numbers, SSNs and other personally-identifiable information, things like that.\n\nRegarding your files, your IT department probably has full admin-access to your computer, and can therefore remotely browse your entire hard drive.\n\nBut you're right, we have much better things to be doing than spying on you.\n\nSource: I'm the guy that does network security at my job.",
"On any work owned computer, assume they have full access to view everything and that everything you do on it is monitored - including geo tracking, ability to see real time what's on the screen, etc. Chances are they probably don't care, but just assume everything is being watched. Use your smart phone if you want to browse personal sites at work."
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6k3kje | everytime i see a shark swimming on tv, there are tiny fish swimming alongside and under it. why is it so? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6k3kje/eli5_everytime_i_see_a_shark_swimming_on_tv_there/ | {
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"It's possible you are seeing remoras. There are remoras that typically follow a host animal and enjoy a symbiotic relationship. The remora cleans debris and parasites from the host, and gets to eat all the parasites, feces, and bloody scraps it can stomach.",
"Those fish you see are in a mutualistic relationship with the shark. Most commonly they are Remora fish.\n\nA mutualistic relationship basically means they benefit each other.\n\nThese fish clean the shark by eating small build up on the body as well as small scraps in and around the mouth/jaws, so the shark provides nurishment. The shark benefits because the fish clean the body and mouth from bacteria and infections which keep the shark healthy.\n\nSimilar situations happen with Hippos as well. "
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5ageue | why does language change over generations / geography? i speak the same way my parents and grandparents do, so why do we speak differently from folks 200 years ago? also, in the us, why do people in different areas have different accents if we all came from england and spoke the same way? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ageue/eli5_why_does_language_change_over_generations/ | {
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"We didn't all come from England. The French and Spanish also had interests in the US. We also imported slaves from Africa. We accepted large amounts of Irish and Italians. So a lot of words and accents meshed together to give you what we have now. That's a pretty broad explanation. Now, with that in mind, realize that every language has different pronunciations. Spanish roll their R's for example. People in Boston are known to drop their R's. Your surroundings and the people you grow up with can have an impact on your speech as well. There are literally dozens of factors that can dictate what sort of accent someone will have and why. ",
"In the case of the US, not everyone that immigrated cane from the same place. For instance, the region where the Dutch settled was different than where say the French settled. There's definitely more detail to this, but this is pretty much the basis.",
"There are several reasons for language change. Slang is a major force you can see all around you. Think about all the words we say that don't mean what they should. Those change over time because people create new ones, and older ones fall out of use.\n\nAnother one is that as languages cross with each other we start to use words for other languages in our own. In English we say Bok Choy for a certain kind of vegetable. This isn't English but we use it anyway.\n\nIn the US, people didn't all come from England and speak the same way. Kind of the point of how USA became how it is is that it had a huge influx of multiple cultures and languages.\n\nThere were large waves of immigrants from Italy, Ireland, England, Africa, China, Germany and so on. All of these accents and more ended up blending together to form a much lazier English that's now formed to be an American accent.\n\nEdit: nice map for you to see _URL_0_",
"I would also add that, although you think you speak the same as your grandparents and parents, it's likely that there is a, say, 3% difference in words commonly used.\n\nSimple phrases like \"oh my heavens!\" or \"holy Toledo!\" that my gam gam uses are pretty rare.\n\nYou see where I'm going with this. Over 200 years, if language changes slightly every 20 years, it can add up quickly.\n\nIt's also of note that it can change rather quickly, such as in my family. My gam gam's \"holy Toledo!\" is a lot different than my \"Holy buttfucking Christ!\"",
"Language is always changing. If a group of speakers is isolated from another group for an extended period of time, the speech of the two groups will most likely develop in different directions. The emphasis is on \"extended\" here, this process can take generations before differences in pronunciation appear that are obviously different to someone who isn't linguistically trained.\n\nYou do not speak exactly the same way your grandparents do. You probably don't even speak exactly the way your parents do. Not everyone who emigrated to to America came from England, and even those that did did not all speak the same way.",
"Great discussion so far. To add a bit:\n\nA few things that are influencing language change now compared to the past:\n\n High levels of literacy and schooling and media. It is far easier for language to drift quickly when you are basing your pronunciation purely on the speaking of those around you. Idioms, slang, mumbled vowels, and local word choice gets passed generation to generation like a game of telephone. But the more students are in schools learning \"the right way to spell,\" the \"right way to speak\" and the \"right name\" for things the less likely it is to drift. This is even more homogenizing when florida, alaska and new york are all using text books from texas (but intended for nation wide use), movies shot in california, and kid songs recorded in new york. Then everyone is going home and watching sesame street and Frozen. Suddenly even the strong local accents are being dampened by exposure to others, misheard words are quickly corrected when you ask \"how do you spell that,\" and within months every soccer mom in denver knows what \"whip and nae nae\" means.\n\nAt the same time, this media allows for some very quick spreading of fresh neologisms. Blog, podcast, red state/blue state, tablet, blue tooth, lol, brb, hashtag \"no filter,\" microbrew. We don't even notice these as changes in the language because they happen so quickly and so ubiquitously and across ages and cultures that we don't register the change (so not only do you not speak like your grandparents did at uour age... your grandparents don't speak like your grandparents did at your age.\n\nTldr: language is changing, but different than the past. Local drift is somewhat dampened by greater literacy and shared media experience. However those same influences mean new words, phrases and concepts enter our lexicon everwhere faster than we notice it.\n\nSo",
"Also, there is no one \"English\", let alone \"British\" accent, there are hundreds, and they can be as different from each other as a Jamaican accent is from an Australian one.",
"Adding to what has already been said, it is easy to identify changes in pronunciation just by watching old movies and/or listening to old radio programs. Studies on different dialects and how they change have been done for quite some time.\n\nFor example, you are likely aware that many people in Boston do not pronounce R sounds at the end of syllables (or the pronunciation is so reduced as to be approximately none). Upper class residents of New York City had the same pronunciation for a long time. Lower class residents began to copy this pronunciation style and the upper class switched to pronouncing their R sounds. Some lower class (or perceived lower class) New York City dialects still lack the R sound at the end of syllables.\n\nIn addition, Canada is currently in the midst of a major vowel shift. This seems to happen periodically in different populations and may be widespread or confined to a smaller area. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe podcast Lexicon Valley has had several good episodes about this sort of thing."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.svg"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/in-the-midst-of-the-canadian-vowel-shift/"
]
] |
||
3ngt5s | why can someone get used to strong alcohol? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ngt5s/eli5_why_can_someone_get_used_to_strong_alcohol/ | {
"a_id": [
"cvnwr7e"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"You're cells have an organelle called the Smooth ER that detoxifies the cell from drugs and alcohol. The more often you ingest it the more efficient this organelle becomes at detoxifying. Since it detoxifies faster when you drink a lot you would need more of that substance to create the same effect. However when you stop drinking and or doing drugs for some amount of time the Smooth ER goes back to normal and your tolerance drops"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2rvvh5 | why does a brown ring form around the inside of my coffee cup after it has been sitting? the ring only forms on the mug at the top level of the liquid. why isn't the whole submerged part of the mug turn brown? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rvvh5/eli5_why_does_a_brown_ring_form_around_the_inside/ | {
"a_id": [
"cnjqrt2",
"cnjufnz"
],
"score": [
12,
3
],
"text": [
"Capillary action draws the coffee at the edge a little bit up the wall of the mug. Then the water evaporates, leaving coffee residue.",
"People have actually studied this phenomon, its called the [Coffee Ring Effect.](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_ring_effect"
]
] |
||
3j5ime | why are advertisers allowed to make text so small that is literally unreadable (on video), or talk so fast that no one can understand a word (radio/video) regarding "fine print" | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j5ime/eli5_why_are_advertisers_allowed_to_make_text_so/ | {
"a_id": [
"cumgiiu"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"There are lots of laws around how you're allowed to present a product in an advertisement. This includes things you have to say about a product (side effects of a medicine etc). \n\nSometime those things they have to say make the product look worse, and they don't like that. So a \"loophole\" to get around this as much as possible is make those messages as short/fast as possible.\n\nThe other reason is sometimes info has to be put into an ad but its just..boring. So they push it to the side"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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